


Night Shift

by aurevell



Series: Those Neon Hours [2]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Alternate Universe - Mob, College Student Stiles Stilinski, I'm committing to that tag now, Left Hand Peter Hale, Lydia Martin & Stiles Stilinski Friendship, M/M, Magical Stiles Stilinski, Mildly Good Peter Hale, diner au, inasmuch as a mob boss can be a good person, the diner is basically a character, well a co-mob boss with his big sis anyway
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-16
Updated: 2020-08-16
Packaged: 2021-03-05 06:15:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 21,466
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25489837
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aurevell/pseuds/aurevell
Summary: Peter raises an eyebrow. “When were you going to tell me you’re a mage?”“When were you going to tell me my favorite diner is a money laundering front for your secret werewolf crime empire?!” Stiles snipes back.Or, Peter and Stiles dance around each other before the truth comes out.
Relationships: Peter Hale/Stiles Stilinski
Series: Those Neon Hours [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1846468
Comments: 131
Kudos: 1088





	1. Field Work

**Author's Note:**

> i would like it noted on record that i have written this only under extreme duress, because i have other stuff i’m trying to outline and so i didn’t plan to continue this. but obviously my dumb brain interpreted “focus on your story” as “focus on THIS story” and so here we are. AND instead of continuing in a cute lil drabble one shot kinda way, it’s gonna be an ugly 15k+ word story. because what the heck, brain??
> 
> enjoy i guess??
> 
> Edit: Check out the Russian translation [here!](https://ficbook.net/readfic/9848493)

The prideful part of Peter keenly enjoys the double-takes he gets when Stiles takes a seat in the back booth.

And it’s not just the betas in his pack, though Peter garnered no small degree of amusement over the way Erica’s footsteps stuttered the first time she brought him a midnight coffee and found him immersed in conversation. Or the way Derek, heading back to report to Talia about the team’s patrols, couldn’t keep his eyebrows from climbing up his forehead.

It’s the regulars, too. At least the ones who know enough of Peter to have guessed he’s not someone whose table you pop over to for casual conversation. The gloomy elderly man who’s been spending his nights at the front tables since before the Hales even took over the diner shoots over a suspicious look when he first sees that Peter has company. The weekday drunks glance over as well, blinking in fuzzy bewilderment until Peter glares them down.

That’s only at the beginning, though. It’s quickly become obvious that Stiles is the latest to join the ranks of the diner regulars. And if he’s moved from his customary window seat to spend time in the back booth, well, that’s no one’s business but his. And Peter’s, obviously.

Even as he allows this to keep happening, Peter is keenly aware that it’s highly unusual. _Stiles_ is unusual. Stiles, who knows nothing of Peter or his reputation, doesn’t temper his cheeky personality or ridiculous stories. In the booth seat across from Peter, he pulls his legs up to his chin, perhaps too distracted by the conversation to bother hiding the hole in the knee of his worn jeans. He leaves messy coffee rings along the edges of the table and stuffs fries into his mouth like he’s starved himself for days. He gestures wildly as he talks and veers onto tangents about journalism or medicine, neither of which can be remotely connected to the thesis he’s pursuing on the influence of Latin phonology on medieval rites and rituals.

Despite himself, Peter often winds up hanging attentively onto Stiles’s every word, though the furtive glance of an onlooker might still assume his expression to be mildly aloof. For some reason, Peter can’t help but be interested in what Stiles has to say—and not only because he likes watching the way his mouth moves. (Peter has since their first date been entranced by that mouth.)

Something about Stiles makes it impossible for Peter to care that his presence here unwinds the stuffy, poised appearance he has carefully cultivated for years. Peter’s job as Left Hand is almost as much about perception as it is action, and he’s gotten where he is today—gotten his _family_ where it is—because he’s deliberately wrapped them all in bloody legends and sharp, jagged edges. The diner is as safe a place as it is possible to be, though, and any onlookers apart from the pack are only ignorant night owls in search of food and warmth. And that’s why Peter tells himself he doesn’t mind letting Stiles soften the sharp picture they make together, his flannel and flailing hands mitigating the impact of Peter’s sleek suit and biting smile.

It’s been a while since Peter wondered if this was a reasonable allowance to make. Maybe since that very first night, when Stiles had the audacity to shuffle over to his booth.

And none of this is how Peter is used to unwinding. He occasionally comes from an exhausting meeting with Talia, from breaking the fingers of a new beta who swiped money from the till, from meeting Boyd over their financial plans for the Mercury Lounge nightclub—and there’s Stiles waiting for him in the booth, a dimpled grin on his face, kicking Peter in the knees when he sits down and distracting him almost immediately with a description of his tragic inability to find some rare, pretentious book.

“Do you _ever_ shut up?” Peter asks him one night. It’s more out of sheer incredulity than exasperation, because he finds himself suddenly glad for the company, glad not to be settling onto his seat alone.

Somehow, in spite of Peter’s straight face and arched brow, Stiles understands the sentiment. He laughs and smiles widely enough for the both of them. “I really don’t,” he replies with cheer. “I guess you’d better get used to it.”

Peter already has. But that’s the problem.

It’s a problem only because Peter has to start thinking of ways to carefully bring this part of their night to an end. Half of the reason he sits in this booth at all is the convenience of the meeting place. This is where Derek and Laura come to talk to him about patrols, where Talia pops over to discuss pack issues. This is where he works, where he spreads the family’s finances across the table—not that he would expect just anyone, even someone as clever as Stiles, to understand the ins and outs of their schemes without a great deal of time spent puzzling over the numbers, but still. This long break from work with Stiles has been nice, but it doesn’t change the fact that this is a place where Peter needs relative privacy.

And so the problem is his need to craft an excuse to hold Stiles at arm’s length. (While they’re in the diner, at any rate. He’s hardly capable of keeping him at arm’s length when they’re elsewhere.)

Fortunately, Stiles himself solves the problem just a few weeks in.

“Alright, look,” Stiles begins reluctantly, rapping his knuckles along the edge of the table. Peter’s been here a scant five minutes, Stiles having been waiting for him to show up for their customary early-morning chats. “I have actual work to do. Research to drown myself in. A thesis to write. Latin to perfect and Old English pronunciation to butcher where no one can hear me.” To Peter’s surprise, he climbs to his feet and slings his backpack—which Peter abruptly realizes he rarely brings nowadays—over his shoulder. “This diner’s the only place I ever actually focus enough to get shit done, apparently. And I have serious deadlines coming up. _Serious_ , serious.” He jerks his thumb toward the front of the restaurant. “I guess my old spot’s calling me.”

It’s a relief as much as it is a disappointment, but Peter’s careful that none of that registers on his face. Instead, he raises an eyebrow, gesturing to the space at the table. “And you can’t do it here instead?”

Stiles sucks his cheek and then grins, leaning on the side of the booth. “I really can’t. You can be pretty distracting, you know.”

Peter preens at this, leaning forward with a slippery smile. “I can assure you, I don’t mean to be.”

“Fuck off,” Stiles laughs. “You know what you’re doing, with your whole…” he gestures at Peter vaguely, without spotlighting anything in particular. He clears his throat. “Thing. And I’m sure you have stuff to do, too. Come get me when you’re done? We can go to your place?” He still goes a little pink when saying it, his voice lilting a little, as if they haven’t been doing it nearly every night for weeks now.

“Alright,” Peter says easily, and then he leans back to enjoy the view as Stiles walks away.

After that, on the nights when Stiles comes to the diner, Stiles sits in his customary booth and hunches over his schoolwork, just as he used to before they started going out. _Which is a good thing,_ Peter reminds himself, focusing his attention on his own work. Later, though, as he stares out toward the entrance to the diner (as is his habit as a werewolf accustomed to constant surveillance to protect his pack) he often lets his gaze linger on Stiles’s back, or the way the dim glow of the pendant light above the table highlights the curve of his neck. Stiles, the brat, sometimes catches him looking and sends a wink over his shoulder.

Peter wonders if Stiles would be quite as playful if he knew the kinds of secrets the papers on Peter’s table contain. If he knew the kind of person Peter was.

Not that Peter is thinking of sharing those secrets anytime soon. Even if Stiles seems to be, against all odds, someone Peter wouldn’t mind allowing to stick around.

~*~

The diner is a different creature at night.

During the daytime it’s blessedly ordinary, its relative proximity to the business district making it a popular haunt for both the business casual crowd and city workers getting off shift. Later, when the glow of lamplight and neon signs overwhelms the room, the crowd grows a little less savory and more lethargic, if still recognizable: hungry partiers fresh from the Mercury Lounge and high on life or something stronger, bitter night shift workers huddled over espressos, and the occasional bumbling drunk looking for a fight with the first available opponent.

Those, at least, are the customers expected at any all-night eatery in the city. But the Moonrise Diner is also a hub of Hale family activity, and some of its nightly visitors can’t be so easily classified. And some of their interactions are odd enough that it would be a wonder if Stiles hasn’t taken note.

One night, Laura rushes in with news of a skirmish against some of the Argent’s underlings, detailing the fight to Peter in hushed tones until he rises to take care of the threat. The mother of Matt Daehler, a smarmy gambling addict of a beta and (Peter suspects) a worthless mole to boot, struggles inside to wail about how it’s somehow _their_ fault her idiot son’s got himself killed. Some hot-blooded Argent, most assuredly gone rogue, gets into a fight with Erica and Derek in the alley on the side of the building, requiring yet another few feet of plastic sheeting and a shallow grave up in the depths of the preserve. Their conflicts with the Argent family are heating up lately in ways Peter normally wouldn’t mind—he’s rarely anything but eager to match wits with anyone idiotic enough to test the Hale family—but the timing of it with his new interest in Stiles is hardly ideal.

Peter catches some long, curious looks from Stiles over this, his impish smirks gradually dissolving into thoughtful glances. After a while, he even grows bold enough, one evening when he finishes his work, to ask why Peter’s family comes and goes at such odd hours.

“Some of our competitors are a little...rougher around the edges than we are, so we’re always on alert,” Peter murmurs. He pointedly rifles through his papers, as if the reminder of his heavy workload might encourage Stiles to drop the subject. “They can make life difficult for us.”

“Some of your _restaurant_ competitors?” Stiles asks incredulously, his brow furrowing. He glances over his shoulder as if to guess what type of competition could possibly want to challenge such an establishment. Over by the bar, two giggling teens are making out against the side of the jukebox. Gloomy Elderly Man is staring dully at the neck of his beer.

“You’re new to the diner business, aren’t you?” Peter asks, finally looking up at Stiles with a toothy smile. “You’ll soon learn that the competition in Beacon Hills can be quite cutthroat if you aren’t careful.”

Stiles squints at him. For a moment, it looks as though he might press the issue. But when he speaks, his solemn tone is laced with cheek. “They’re coming for your curly fry recipe, aren’t they?” he inquires. “Or—no, it’s the coffee, isn’t it? Worth its weight in gold.”

“We _do_ import the world’s finest.” It’s the same airy tone he often uses to curb Stiles’s questions. Stiles has the tendency to accept slippery answers, or to at least play along with the charade, given the right cadence of voice.

This time, though, Stiles doesn’t smile at his obvious craftiness. Instead, he studies Peter with the same solemn expression. “You’d tell me, though, wouldn’t you? If there’s something I need to worry about?”

“Of course, sweetheart.” It isn’t a lie, either: Stiles _doesn’t_ need to worry about this, though Peter is sure the reassurance isn’t enough to keep him from wondering.

As it is, though, Peter is aware that if _whatever they are to each other_ continues to play out, he may have to tell Stiles the truth someday. Stiles is too clever by far, clever enough to suspect deceit—and given his stubborn tendency to research topics like a bloodhound trailing a scent, Peter isn’t entirely sure it’s wise to let him come to his own conclusions. And none of this is even _touching_ on the concept of werewolves, or the existence of the supernatural. Peter has no experience whatsoever explaining any of that, as he’s never had anyone he needed to explain it _to,_ much less anyone whose opinion he cares enough about to manipulate their introduction to his world.

But for now, at least, while things are relatively new, it’s simpler to keep cultivating the charade. And for the moment, it doesn’t matter. Whatever suspicions Stiles keeps tucked away in his head, they never keep him from circling back to Peter. Even now, he only nods slowly, face clearing as if he’s accepted all the lies Peter keeps sliding his way.

“Alright,” he allows, and that smile finally creeps onto his face. This time, it’s a little sly. “Ready to head out?”

~*~

Peter’s choice of apartment was born from a compromise between luxury and convenience. Amenities like onsite dry cleaning, total blackout shades, and a state-of-the-art security system combine nicely with its location just a few minutes away from the Moonrise Diner _._ Beacon Hills is the type of place where you can drive two blocks to upgrade from the dingy grey offices and old municipal buildings near the diner to the newly developed downtown, as if you’ve crossed into an entirely new city, one actually built in this century.

The first night Peter brought Stiles here, Stiles had been so distracted by the lobby alone that he’d stopped short at the sight of its lofty ceilings and the artful arrangements of armchairs around the fireplaces. (“Is this an apartment building or a hotel?” he’d hissed. “Wait, I’m sorry—is that an actual _front desk_?”) The apartment itself had been just as much a spectacle. Peter found himself torn between annoyance and bewilderment as Stiles wandered from room to room to comment and gripe and run his hands over everything, all his arousal from the ride over having apparently flown from his head—until Peter lured him into his room and practically wrestled him into the bed, at which point Stiles melted into the silk sheets and luxury foam mattress with a groan that almost made the werewolf wonder if he was really needed at all.

After that (and Peter likes to think it’s not just because of the quality of the mattress), Stiles has a tendency to drag Peter into his bed whenever he has the chance. Or maybe it’s a tendency to pull Peter closer in general: tugging his necktie to bring Peter’s mouth to Stiles’s wicked grin, dragging him out to the alley behind the diner so he can get a hand down Peter’s pants.

Sometimes it’s like what’s happening now, both of them stumbling in from the diner, Peter yanking Stiles’s shirt overhead and Stiles pulling him on top of him on the sheets. A few times, it’s happened after Peter coordinated a nice dinner, somewhere that wasn’t _their_ diner but still adjacent enough in expense not to feel like an intimidating step in their relationship. And a few times, Stiles has shown up at Peter’s front door without warning, dragging Peter almost wordlessly into the bedroom regardless of what he’s currently invested in.

Peter always likes the sight of Stiles in the expansive bed, in the room in general, his clothes on the floor and his backpack dumped unceremoniously somewhere in the hall. Clothed or not, he always makes the space feel more lived in. Less bare. And then he likes the way Stiles’s skin moves against his, the almost desperate way he draws Peter in, as if he can’t get near enough to him. He likes the sounds Stiles makes, needy and demanding even when he tries to bottle them up. He likes the firmness of Stiles’s bare thighs, the way they fall open when Peter nudges them apart. And how Stiles lets Peter take him apart piece by piece.

Stiles continues to worm his way into his bed nowadays, but Peter isn’t entirely sure how to make him stay.

The bed has come to smell like him: coffee and ink and a faint, earthy musk, heaviest on the side of the bed near the window, the side Stiles prefers. But over time, Peter has slowly become aware that Stiles nearly always carries a hint of another scent—a woman’s. It’s not nearly strong enough to indicate a sexual relationship, but the fact that Stiles carries her smell on him so frequently speaks to their familiarity. A friend, Peter guesses. Or perhaps family. A mystery Stiles has never touched on, and one Peter has never brought himself to inquire about.

Now, as Peter thrusts into him, Stiles brings his hand to scrabble up Peter’s chest and to the side of his face—possibly having intended to curl around the back of Peter’s neck and pull him lower for a kiss. But for an instant, his hand settles there against Peter’s cheek, forgotten. Breathing heavily, Peter gets the faintest whiff of ozone. Of something like magic. Not recent but older, if it truly _is_ in fact a hint of something magical.

For one distracted second, Peter lets himself wonder what it means, if it means anything at all. But without revealing more about himself than he means to, there’s no way for him to ask.

A question for later, then. To join the others.

~*~

Peter is not the only one with secrets.

Back in the early days when Stiles was just a strange new regular at the diner, back before he’d come over to pick Peter up in his ridiculous way, Peter used to think Stiles left the diner in the wee hours of the morning to go to bed like a normal person. There could be little else to do, after all, following the several hours of coursework he does every day. Especially with the rest of the city closed or dark, with the possible exception of other sleepy diners like the Hales’ (although Stiles, by his own fervent declaration, “would _never_ cheat on the Moonrise”) _._ Peter himself, even considering the odd hours he sleeps, is typically in bed by three at the absolute latest, and only on the nights when the most pressing matters require it.

Now that he’s gotten to know Stiles, however, Peter finds that the truth is more complicated.

Stiles takes evening classes at Beacon Hills University south of town and has no morning or day classes at all. The one and only time Peter called him when the sun was up, intending to perhaps move their date to a restaurant with even a _bottom-shelf_ wine list, Stiles had blearily informed him that he’d been sleeping and Peter could go fuck himself if he ever called again before 4 p.m. After irritably seeking clarification that evening, Peter discovered that Stiles is busy until just after dawn, that the prime hours of daylight are when he sleeps.

What he does with the rest of his nights, however, Peter still isn’t sure.

Back when they first met, Peter hadn’t needed to circle to that recurring first-date question of whether he should kick his partner out of bed (though by now Peter has come down firmly on the side of allowing Stiles to spend the night if ever he so chooses). When Peter finishes with him, Stiles always curls into him sleepily, pressing his cold nose into Peter’s chest and occasionally manhandling Peter into draping an arm across his shoulders. Sometimes he must actually drift off, because his breathing certainly evens out enough, his heartbeat slowing. But eventually, though—usually around three and sometimes just when Peter himself is drifting off—Stiles always grumpily pulls himself upright and begins to slip his clothes back on.

“I’m on the night shift,” Stiles tells him the first time he’s asked, a wry smile on his face as Peter grumbles at his movements. It’s the same tone Peter’s getting used to, the kind of tone they both use on each other to signal that they aren’t telling the full truth and don’t mind letting it be known. And after he says this, no matter how many times Peter asks, his response never wavers.

On one night in particular, while rain falls in a fine mist against the floor-to-ceiling windows on the east wall, Stiles sits on the edge of the bed and fumbles with his shoes in the dark. Peter, propped up on one elbow, stares at Stiles’s back, watching the pull of his shoulder blades beneath the fabric of his shirt. He carefully squashes the feeling of being left behind like a jilted lover: Peter Hale does _not_ cling, nor does he pine. And without really considering it, Peter reaches over to yank Stiles backward by his collar, making him splutter and choke and laugh until Peter shifts over him to kiss him hard into the mattress, stroking a thumb across the hollow of his throat. “One day,” Peter tells him, pulling away just until their mouths are barely touching, “you’ll tell me what kind of job you run off to.”

“Maybe,” Stiles murmurs back. He tolerates another kiss, Peter’s fingers still across his throat, and then he wriggles out from under him. “If you stop being such a creep.” He kisses Peter’s jaw, maybe to show he doesn’t mean the slight, and pushes Peter into bed. Peter only reins in his strength to allow the movement because he can watch Stiles’s ass as he bends to find his pants just as well from here.

(Peter is not going to ask Stiles again. But he _is_ going to find out.)

~*~

Peter doesn’t do field work anymore. Not as a general rule. He hasn’t in ages, not since the Hales began expanding their outfit. In recent years, they’ve been slowly branching out, biting those who show up on their doorstep asking for it. (This requires references from at least three trusted pack members, of course, as well as a custom background check and interviews with both Peter and Talia.) Laura and Derek each run their own smaller packs within the family now, and Boyd has all but taken over the Mercury Lounge nightclub. Nowadays, instead of sinking his claws into the latest threat to their pack, Peter typically delves into their numbers and collaborates with Talia to manage the big picture of their operation.

So when Peter needs something done, there are plenty of hands on deck to do it for him. And what he’s asking for is simple. Tracking is the type of thing virtually any new beta could manage, fresh out of training. Peter could very easily manage it himself—except that it seems a little too personal. If Peter hands off the work to someone else, it means this potential issue is in fact a non-issue, nothing to worry about at all, just a small distraction to satisfy his idle curiosity about what a certain diner regular happens to do with his nights.

Derek frowns when Peter gives the order, but he doesn’t comment, even though he very well could—having personally provided or overseen all of Derek’s training himself, Peter allows Derek far more leeway than he gives most of the Hale betas. But Peter has never asked for something so clearly personal in nature either, and so perhaps Derek thinks twice about digging into something potentially intimate, or would rather not be privy to any potentially lurid details of Peter’s romantic life.

That’s likely why Derek further delegates the mundane task to one of the other betas at his command. And so on a rare night when Stiles claims by text to be too busy after school to show up at the diner at all, Derek lets Peter know he’s sent one of his own to track him down.

Peter pretends to be engrossed in his work as the night presses on, waiting for the report. He imagines the job won’t be difficult. The university campus isn’t terribly large—Peter’s already seen Stiles’s dorm and most of the places he studies, having had to go find Stiles and drag him to the car when Stiles is too distracted to be on time for one of their dates—and he can’t imagine Stiles goes terribly far from the area, given how frequently he gripes about his packed schedule.

But the report is inconclusive. Though the beta apparently found Stiles after his last class, she lost him only a half hour’s walk from the university. There hadn’t even been a scent to follow, she claimed.

At the next available opportunity, it’s Isaac who’s sent to tail Stiles after his class wraps up in the early hours of the night. Which is why it’s particularly surprising when Derek comes by to report that the trail has been lost a second time. Though Isaac is not as adept a wolf as any of the Hales themselves, he’s quickly made a name for himself as one of the most reliable of the betas along with Boyd and Erica. Despite this, Peter communicates to Derek with a sharp look that he would have made his betas sorely regret their incompetence if he were in Derek’s shoes.

The following night, another opportunity arises when Stiles comes over to Peter’s table for a reluctant goodbye. “Duty calls,” he says breezily, offering Peter a salute as he backtracks through the door. When he’s finally gone, Peter turns to find Derek leaning out of the kitchen door, his eyebrows raised. When Peter nods, Derek heads out after Stiles without a word, slinking into the shadows outside.

A little over an hour later, the door to the diner opens again and Derek returns, more sullen than usual, to face Peter beside his booth.

“How is that possible?” Peter snarls, reading the reluctance in Derek’s expression. “ _I_ trained you.”

“I don’t know what to tell you,” Derek grumbles, glaring down at the table. “One second he was there, and the next he turned a corner and—wasn’t. There was no scent. Nothing.”

Peter absorbs this information. Three reports of losing all sight and smell of Stiles, and by progressively more adept wolves. “Where did you lose him?”

Derek levels a sharp look at him. “Not far from the docks,” he says pointedly.

 _Argent territory,_ Peter thinks, knowing Derek won’t say this aloud. The beta waits expectantly for Peter’s verdict, but Peter doesn’t have one right away. Something stirs in his gut, something dark and unsettling. He remembers abruptly the tang of ozone on Stiles that night—maybe magic, or maybe something else. He’s smelled it again since. The part of him responsible for keeping his pack safe, the part that anticipates and plans for the worst-case scenario, is rigid with the expectation of deceit. Of trouble. It’s howling for him to be as ruthless as he must be with threats, to haul Stiles into the back room of the diner and drag the answers out of him with as much blood as he needs.

But Stiles isn’t just a random interloper, someone Peter can hurt and cast off as needed. Not anymore. Stiles is someone Peter still wants in his booth, in his bed. And the little shreds of evidence he’s obtained don’t give him much to work with if he wants to paint a full picture. It’s _possible_ that Stiles is a magic user working with the Argents, he allows—and in that case, it’s best to investigate as discreetly as he can. But it’s also possible that Stiles is just a bookish but relentlessly earnest university student with some strange or embarrassing fix for his insomnia.

Then again, there’s no reason for a university student to sneak around the city docks in the dead of night. And maybe, when Peter really considers it, there’s no reason for a university student to accept Peter’s own boldfaced lies so unflinchingly. No reason for a university student to proposition a stranger in a darkened diner in one of the most crime-ridden parts of the city. Wouldn’t it make _more_ sense, not less, if Stiles had always intended to plant himself at Peter’s side? If he has been trying to infiltrate the Hales from the very first moment he spoke to Peter?

And then Peter remembers their first meeting and nearly snorts aloud. All of that may be possible, but it seems profoundly unlikely.

“What are we going to do about it?” Derek presses at last, still glaring.

For another long moment, Peter considers Stiles and his dimpled smile, the pink flush that trickles down his neck and over his ears when Peter says the right words, the casual and sure way he tugs Peter closer. Always pulling Peter in. Peter is good at knowing when people are lying to him, an expertise that stretches beyond his ability to hear the jump of a heartbeat, and there is no lie in Stiles when he pulls Peter closer, of that he is sure.

What the full truth is, though, he couldn’t say.

“Nothing,” Peter says finally. He sends Derek away scowling.

~*~

Stiles is practically glowing when he makes his way into the diner a little after ten the following night, a cheery smile on his face as he winds through the dinner crowd to Peter’s both. Peter, having spent the early evening comparing his latest files with notes in his laptop, pauses to tuck a few of his more telling documents into a folder and leaves the rest scattered where they lie.

“Hello, creeper,” Stiles chirps, dropping his bag onto the opposite seat and dumping a few books on the table. He leans over to kiss Peter, and Peter can feel the grin lingering on his lips.

“You’re in a good mood,” Peter observes curiously.

“I’m gonna beat this fucking thesis into the _dirt_ ,” Stiles replies, clenching his fist in emphasis—as if his challenge concerns fighting instead of ink. “Getting closer all the time now.” He peers over his shoulder at the bar counter, where Erica’s boredly rearranging the bottles on the top shelf. “Anyway, I’m gonna go grab a coffee. You want me to get you a refill?”

Peter raises an eyebrow. “You know she’ll bring one over for you on her own time. You should stop bothering my servers.”

“Aw, jealous?” Stiles laughs. “But you’re the big, scary boss. And when she comes over here she’s too busy being respectful to insult my taste in movies.”

“Last I heard, it was the other way around.”

“The mocking goes both ways,” Stiles grins, nearly backing into the table behind him before he rights himself and makes it to the bar. Peter rolls his eyes.

Turning back to his laptop, he skims through the news: Ennis’s parole bid is finally denied, and the police have finally gotten a warrant to search the Argent-owned warehouse off Ellis Avenue, an interesting sign that they’re getting closer in their criminal investigations, though Peter highly doubts they’ll find anything truly incriminating. It’s in mulling this over that he glances at the stack of books Stiles left—and then does a double-take. The uppermost book is a worn, leather-bound volume. But what’s caught his eye is the page of looseleaf sticking out of the side. The book itself has a Latin title, but the edges of the looseleaf bear writing in Stiles’s hand. Writing that is distinctly _not_ in Latin. Even upside down, Peter recognizes it as sigils.

He turns to the bar, finding Stiles half-turned away from him and leaning over the counter. Whatever he’s saying makes Erica cackle, throwing a hand over her eyes.

Without hesitation, Peter opens the book to pull the paper free. It takes him a long moment to understand what he’s looking at, mostly because his knowledge of magic is broad but not particularly deep. There are a few scattered sigils in the margins of the page. He’s careful not to touch them, though he assumes they’re only reminders or notes and not part of any actual spell themselves. The majority of the page is in Latin—and while he can’t read it, he can guess based on the sigils present that these must be druidic incantations in Latin.

 _He’s a druid, then,_ Peter realizes, turning to blink at the bar before quickly setting the paper back into place. He can’t say he’s entirely surprised that his suspicions of magic have been proven true, though he has to ramp down his distaste at the thought of druidic magic. When it comes to the choice of pack emissary, Talia has always insisted on using Deaton—a druid with a vague, unreadable expression that Peter has never liked. And if he’s being completely honest, druidic magic has always seemed too pointlessly neutral for his tastes and too pacifist for his needs. Nor is it particularly powerful. But as he glances over one last time to find Stiles mimicking outrage at Erica’s gleeful expression, he thinks he can forgive Stiles for that.

Questions bubble into Peter’s mind. He stares distractedly at the screen of his laptop as he considers the ramifications of this: If Stiles is learning from a druid, where do his allegiances lie? And might he be persuaded to work with the Hales? Regardless of his magical strength, Stiles would be useful for his strange disappearing trick, if nothing else. (Warding, maybe? Druids usually do stationary, long-term spells like that, but Peter doesn’t know enough about magic to be sure.) And if Stiles is already aware of the supernatural world as a whole, and of werewolves specifically, so much the better. He might be a good ally, if Peter can figure him out.

Peter has never been so mystified by anyone. In spite of himself, and the potential danger, there’s something about the secrecy of Stiles he finds enchanting.

Talia, as it turns out, finds it incredibly less so.

Peter may be the Left Hand, the gatherer of intelligence, but his sister is no less capable of gaining insights than he is, especially within the walls of the diner itself. And news of someone at Peter’s booth—especially a stranger to the Hale pack—surely must have reached her ears. Especially once it became abundantly clear that said stranger has been sharing her brother’s bed as well. Neither of them have discussed Stiles, but Peter has long known that Talia is aware of the situation, and that she likely doesn’t know what to make of the change. He did, however, hope that she would waver indecisively (and thus leave him in peace) for a bit longer.

When Stiles at last comes back over to briefly chat with Peter before vacating the booth in favor of his customary window seat, Talia ventures from her office in the back to leave for the night—only this time, she pauses to put down her bag and take a seat across from Peter.

Even in the latest hours of the night, Talia looks as clean-cut as Peter does: a smart green blazer over a black dress, a modest necklace that glitters in the overhead lamplight. Her only concession is her long, dark hair, which is now falling from a messy bun instead of neatly down around her shoulders. Either way, she looks much more like a city councilwoman than the ruler of a criminal empire, as she obviously means to. The public and legitimate face of the Hale family needs to look clean and unassuming, after all.

Peter suffers through her pleasantries, Talia being the queen of them, and irritably ( _not_ childishly) decides that he will not offer answers unless Talia asks the right questions. She makes small talk about their finances, about the beta training, about the nightclub. Eventually, though, she discards the niceties.

“I hear you’ve been seeing someone,” Talia prompts at last.

Peter’s been wondering if she would ever go for the throat or only wait for him to come to her. After all, they typically stay out of each other’s business as long as it doesn’t concern the family. This, Talia must have decided, concerns the family. Peter offers a pleasant smile. “Is that so?”

“Is it true?”

Peter gives a long-suffering sigh. “I suppose you could say so.”

She nods slowly, and her eyes drift over to Stiles at the window seat. Her frown is calculating. “Is it serious?”

“Not that it’s any of your business, but it’s...early.”

“It _is_ my business when every interloper is a potential danger to this family,” she returns. “ _We_ come first, Peter.”

“Do you think I’ve forgotten?” Peter asks, stubborn. “I know that better than anyone.” At Talia’s sharp look, he reflects on this: the Hales only began developing their empire in their mother’s time, back when it became clear that it was the best way to protect a pack of werewolves in an expanding city that had quickly grown overrun by crime. Peter and Talia helped their mother drag the Hale name up from nothing, regardless of the blood it took to make it so. “We both do,” he amends.

“He’s proven smart enough to lose three tails,” she remarks. “One of them near the Argent docks.”

Peter frowns, disliking the direction of the conversation. “Stiles isn’t a danger to us.”

Talia stares at him, weighing the solemnity of his expression. Peter is a good judge of people, excellent even; he’s proven his ability to sniff out a mole as if there’s something tangible on their clothes. She must remember this, because she swallows back whatever else she was going to say. “Tell me you’re sure,” she sighs.

“I will be soon.”

She nods, rubbing her thumbs under her eyes, pressing at the dark circles there. “Alright. Don’t let him in until you are. The best of us can be blinded when...when we want to let ourselves be.” Then she lowers her hands and smiles, adding lightly, “But I’m sure I don’t have to tell _you_ that.”

She doesn’t. There are only a few parts of the new beta training that Peter finds critical enough to do himself, a few things he wants to ensure are crammed into their empty heads whatever the cost. Among them is the mandate that _no one outside of the family should be trusted._ There are cops on every corner. Friends can wear a wire as readily as they can drop wolfsbane in your drink. The lover you let into your bed can easily slip a knife between your ribs.

“You don’t need to tell me anything at all,” Peter declares, raising his chin.

Talia sighs huffily, and stoops over to drag off her heels. From her bag she produces a pair of simple black flats. “Alright, the inquisition is over,” she replies as she pulls the shoes on, though she seems more tired than annoyed. She stands, taking her heels with her. “For what it’s worth, it’s...if you’re happy, and you’re _sure_ about him, then I’m glad. For you.”

Peter’s eyebrows rise of their own accord. “Alright.”

“Maybe you’ll introduce us when the time is right,” Talia adds. “And that’s enough discussion of feelings for tonight.” She turns smartly around, though not before he catches the sly smile on her face, and heads outside where a car waits out on the street to take her home. “Goodnight, Peter.”

He murmurs a goodnight he knows she can hear and leans against the padded seat back.

 _It’s time to be sure of Stiles,_ he decides.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next time: Peter gets sneaky(er) and Stiles gets defensive. Plus, everyone learns that communication is a key part of relationships, even if you're the boss of a super secret crime empire.
> 
> Anyway, this whole thing has a very concrete outline, so more is coming soon as I keep writing and filling in the gaps. I love hearing your thoughts as we go, so please leave me a comment or kudos <3


	2. Negotiations

Beacon Hills is the little-known magical capital of the country.

Just over twenty years ago, the growing strength of the nemeton put the sleepy town on the map, especially for magic users wanting to draw on a natural source of power for spellwork. It’s made the city a haven for druids and witches and even vampires, not to mention the other assorted beings that dwell both in and outside the preserve.

The other thing that put it on the map? The not-exactly-illegal (but certainly secretive) trade in _Ipomoea Lunaris,_ the glowing moonflowers at the nemeton’s base. Magic users powder, steep, crush, or scatter the luminescent white petals in a range of spells. Not to mention the leaves themselves, which fetch a pretty penny when shipped to the arcane night markets downstate.

As the legal owners of the land on which the tree grows, the Hales control the local trade on moonflowers, which they sell alongside more mundane nastiness. It’s made them more closely enmeshed in the sociopolitical landscape of the city than they’ve been in generations. Especially now that Beacon Hills has grown into the kind of place where a quarter of all residents are a little more than human, a place where the local law enforcement might look the other way if one of your betas shows a bit of extra fang in a back-alley fight.

A place where you stand the best chance of protecting your family from hunters within the city limits.

That kind of protection is Peter’s responsibility. And knowing with absolute certainty who Stiles is, _what_ Stiles is, is the only way to protect his own. In this, there’s no room for doubt. And so at last, Peter takes care of the field work himself.

Stiles leaves Peter’s apartment in the early hours of the night, yawning widely as he slips out of bed and peppering kisses into Peter’s jawline before he goes. Peter listens to him gather his bags and head out the front door before rising to get dressed. He’s quietly confirmed with the front desk that Stiles never takes a cab or gets into a car when he leaves, and so he takes the elevator to the garage, slinks through the back exit, and catches sight of Stiles’s retreating back when he comes around the side of the building.

In the wee morning hours, the streets are nearly silent, with only the occasional car driving past. The neighborhood around Peter’s apartment isn’t the type of place for nightclubs and all-night diners, and Peter has no trouble keeping tabs on Stiles’s figure loping forward in the dark.

Wary of being caught, especially with Stiles’s strange ability to seemingly disappear on command, Peter pulls out his stealthiest stride and clings to the shadows whenever he can, straying out of range of the streetlights. This becomes easier the further they walk. Stiles winds his way through increasingly darker streets and then litter-strewn alleys, into the seedier part of town near the docks. At last the buildings grow more and more expansive, the black shapes of industrial complexes and warehouses looming to either side of them.

It happens like Derek said it would. One moment, Peter lingers at one side of a building to let Stiles round a corner. In the next, when Peter makes his way forward and rounds the same corner, the moonlit stretch of road before him is completely empty.

Peter stares out into the open, frowning. He steps forward, smelling traces of Stiles on the air for a few paces, and then nothing. The scent of him dissipates completely, as if Stiles has in fact disappeared entirely. It’s possible, Peter thinks, that Stiles caught wind of a pursuer and ran to round the nearest corner, but Peter hadn’t heard the sound of running feet. And it wouldn’t explain the absence of smell.

Something’s wrong. The expectation of danger makes his blood pound through his veins. Peter quickly shifts in the darkness. Out of nowhere, a burst of bright amber light knocks him back. The smell of ozone is suddenly everywhere, the smell of magic, and if Peter had been any younger or less experienced he’d have ended up flat on his ass in a ridiculously embarrassing way. As it is, he stumbles back a few paces and brings up his claws.

His eyes adjust quickly, only to find that the alley is still empty. There’s nothing that could possibly have done this, until there is.

“ _Peter?_ Is that you? What the fuck?” It’s Stiles’s voice, disembodied and from a few yards away, and then Stiles himself is instantly before him, as suddenly as if someone clicked on a television. His amber eyes are glinting, or maybe it’s the glow around his hands, which are stretched defensively toward Peter.

With a sudden jolt, Peter’s mind flashes to the page of looseleaf paper with its sigils and Latin. _Those weren’t wards, they were spells,_ he realizes. _He isn’t a druid, he’s a mage._

The difference is not a subtle one, and it speaks to how little Peter knows of magic. A druid’s magic is slower and more ritual-based—nothing like what he now sees before him. Mages, on the other hand, are relatively rare, using their spark to do more complex work than what can often be accomplished with druidic incantations and wards, or even sometimes with witchcraft. Other than a handful of powerful mages downstate, Peter doesn’t think he’s heard of any in the immediate area at all.

It takes a long moment to reconcile the image of Stiles—warm, sleepy, pliant Stiles—with the man before him, a man whose eyes practically glow in the light of his magic. There’s _so much_ he doesn’t know about Stiles, Peter realizes suddenly, and he fights the urge to lash out in panic.

He still wants to hope that Stiles doesn’t mean to attack him. It’s just a matter of drawing that version of Stiles out into the open.

Against every rule he’s drilled into the head of every beta the Hales have taken in, Peter retracts his fangs and claws. He even schools his features into something less threatening, like he can casually play this off as a joke—though he imagines his smile is more cutting than usual.

“Stiles,” he says amiably, as if they’ve agreed to meet here for a date. “Nice to see you.”

The sudden shift in mood seems to catch Stiles off guard, or maybe it’s the sound of Peter’s voice: unless Stiles has found a way to enhance his human eyesight, he’s probably glad for confirmation that the shadowed and wolfish figure is, in fact, only Peter. He lowers his hands, at least.

“Hi? No—sorry, but _what the fuck_?” He creeps forward a bit, maybe so the faint light of his magic can better illuminate Peter’s face. “I’ve got randos following all the fucking time, and then I thought you guys could take a hint if I lost you, and then here _you_ are. Why are you following me?”

“I wasn’t.” At Stiles’s incredulous look, Peter amends, “It hasn’t been me the entire time. Before, those were…”

“But it was on your orders,” Stiles realizes slowly. “Whoever it was.”

Instead of answering, Peter raises an eyebrow. “When were you going to tell me you’re a mage?”

“When were you going to tell me my favorite diner is a _money laundering front_ for your secret werewolf crime empire?” Stiles snipes back.

Well, there’s his answer to the question of how much Stiles knows. For a moment, Peter considers lying. Especially because, upon searching Stiles’s face, he can tell that Stiles himself isn’t completely sure about his own words; he’s waiting for Peter to confirm or deny them.

Peter might be able to hide the truth. To sideline Stiles. But Stiles is smart enough to dig it out eventually, and the reality is that Peter is tired of hiding this. Worse, he doesn’t think Stiles would forgive him the deception once he learned the truth later—and he’s clearly smart enough to continue digging.

More pressing is the fact that Stiles remains, judging by the magic still boiling in his extended right palm, very suspicious and defensive.

Peter inclines his chin. “How did you figure it out?”

“I didn’t,” Stiles says slowly. He looks stunned, as if he didn’t really expect Peter to confirm his theory. “Someone told me.”

At this, Peter bites back a snarl. “Who?”

“No, not...not one of _your_ people,” Stiles replies quickly. “It was someone else. Someone who, uh...they aren’t a danger to you. Anymore.”

Peter takes a few paces to the side, restless, though he’s careful to keep his eyes on Stiles. “Who is it?”

Stiles stares back. “Matt Daehler?”

Peter _does_ snarl now, his steps quickening before he manages to settle back down. “He _was_ a mole, then,” he says at last. “I’d suspected. But he’s dead, by all accounts. He fell into Argent hands.” It occurs to him now, though, that there had been no body. Not that that’s entirely unusual. The Argents have ways of making people disappear, more than any other family in the region. It helps that they have access to the docks, because if there’s one solution for covering up a murder, it’s letting the evidence disappear into the dark waters of the lake. It’s simple, clean, and exactly the kind of disposal Peter has always wished the Hales could get their hands on.

“Yeah, he’s dead now,” Stiles confirms, shifting his weight.

No uptick in his heartbeat. Peter’s frown deepens, but in spite of his irritation he can’t help the sense of intrigue fighting for attention. “Explain.”

Stiles’s face goes stony. “I don’t think _I_ should be the one explaining shit right now. I didn’t just tail someone in the middle of the night like a giant fucking creep.”

This is probably an attempt to make Peter feel guilty, but Peter is incapable of such a thing. Especially when he can’t be sure that Stiles doesn’t _deserve_ to be followed, or worse. Stiles may well deserve to have his secrets drawn out of him, may deserve the full extent of Peter’s ire. Peter still doesn’t think he does—still avidly hopes he doesn’t—but he’s hungry to know for sure what those secrets are, to possess them all.

He starts with the question he most wants to get out of the way. “Why did you come up to me, that first day in the diner?”

Stiles’s face morphs slowly from confusion to realization to anger. “No, I didn’t fucking know who you were, if that’s what you’re asking!” Peter expected the answer, but he still finds himself strangely relieved to hear it spoken aloud regardless, especially paired with such an indignant tone. “As it turns out, I’m the kind of idiot who asks out a _mob boss_ by total accident. Because why should anything about my life be fucking easy?” he adds with a grumpy huff, mostly to himself. Then, after a beat, he wonders, “Are you gonna try to kill me?”

Peter frowns at this, finding himself annoyed by the knowledge that the most logical answer is still _yes._ “If I were going to kill you, I’d have done it twenty minutes ago when your back was still turned.”

“I figured,” Stiles says slowly. “But you might have changed your mind. And honestly, you looked so pissed at first that I wasn’t sure.” He bites his lip, glancing down at his hands, and slowly balls them into fists. The glow recedes.

Peter watches it fade, the darkness deepening around them. “Where are you going?”

His eyes haven’t yet adjusted to the change in lighting, so Stiles’s expression is unreadable. “You can’t know that yet. And I’m running late,” he adds, more cautiously. “I need to go. Alone.”

It’s a ludicrous statement. They have a thousand things to talk about before Peter can even consider letting Stiles walk away from him. The wolf inside him howls at the idea of Stiles going anywhere now, spilling whatever he’s learned of Peter and his pack. Secrets that could carve up everything Peter works so hard to protect. “You can’t really think I’ll just let you leave,” Peter murmurs. “I need to know what you know.” Peter considers what he might do to keep Stiles under his control: run him down, tie him up. It’s nothing he hasn’t done before, though never to someone he’s liked as much as he likes Stiles.

Stiles has grown stiff at Peter’s words, as if he too is wondering the same thing, as if it’s only now that Peter is slowly shifting into a stranger before his eyes. And if Stiles runs, Peter will chase him—it’s in his nature. It’s who he is. Even now, when he can’t be sure of his success, or whether Stiles will manage to once again vanish before his eyes, Peter will chase him. Peter may lose him. Maybe even in more ways than one.

But when Stiles finally moves, it’s not to run away.

Instead, he steps toward Peter. His hands hang loosely by his sides, palms out, as if to show he has no magical intent. In the moonlight, his eyes look wary. When he does raise one hand, slow enough for Peter to stop it if he wants, it’s only to cup Peter’s jaw.

“We’re going to talk more about this. I promise,” he says, and he kisses Peter softly on the mouth. “Just—later. And by the way, _you_ have a lot of explaining to do too, creeperwolf,” he adds, and when he kisses Peter again, there’s something a little hungry in it, or maybe a little desperate.

The air shifts, and when Peter pulls back, Stiles is gone. The alley is empty.

Peter snarls his displeasure at the trick, a trick he should have seen coming. His wolf is growling with the furious urge to pursue Stiles, wherever he’s gone, whether to tear him to pieces or curl into him Peter can’t be sure.

 _I promise,_ Stiles said. And Peter will absolutely hold him to that.

~*~

The horizon blazes with a dull purple glow that slowly spreads across the stars, chased by a deep pink that grows rosier in the eastern sky as the morning wears on. The light sets the windows of the adjacent buildings aflame.

Peter watches it happen from his apartment, pacing every now and then to sate his wolf’s restless urges. He gets no sleep. Worst of all, he tells none of the Hales about the potential breach in security, and he can’t quite express why.

A little after nine, he drives to the university. It would be laughably simple to breeze past the dorm’s lax keycard security, even without the relative ease of social engineering. But Peter instead reassures himself by parking his car and coming to stand outside Stiles’s building at exactly the spot where, two stories overhead, a familiar heartbeat thumps lethargically in slumber.

At the very least, Stiles hasn’t fled the city. As far as Peter can guess, he actually intends to keep his word.

Still, Peter has a hard time waiting for evening, waiting for Stiles to decide when _later_ will be.

Throughout the rest of the day, Peter’s texts to Stiles go unanswered, as they often do at this time. Stiles’s sleep schedule continues until mid-afternoon, and by his own admission he typically scrambles to his work study in the university mailroom as a chaotic mess and then hurries off to class, ignoring virtually everything else until he’s done with his last one.

But today is Thursday. And Peter knows where Stiles will be at exactly five thirty.

These days, the city is very built up, with many more buildings than Peter remembers from childhood. But Beacon Hills University is still tree lined and practically forested in some areas. Peter’s been to the campus a few times recently to pick up or drop off Stiles, much more often even than when Derek was attending a while back. He knows, too, that Stiles’s preferred work location is a metal picnic table beneath a grove of trees in the east quad, just secluded enough for a little peace and quiet without entirely abandoning the bustle of the main walkways. And on Thursdays, when Stiles meets with his thesis advisor, he tends to stake out his spot early.

The afternoon is just stretching into evening when Peter arrives, the breeze through the branches overhead sending shadows skittering over the sidewalk.

Peter approaches Stiles from behind, determined and a little tense lest some sound or spell alert Stiles to his presence. He needn’t have worried. Stiles is so drawn into his work that Peter manages to make it all the way to Stiles’s back without him so much as turning his head.

He stares for a moment at Stiles’s messy hair and the long column of his neck, wondering where this conversation will go and wishing he could say with certainty what will become of them afterward. Then he leans down and wraps his arms over Stiles’s shoulders and chest, in a backward hug, getting perverse enjoyment at the way the mage jumps in surprise under his touch, heart jumping as well. “Hello,” Peter says pleasantly into the shell of his ear. “I’d like to talk now.”

After the acrid scent of fright wears off, Stiles only takes a moment to calm his breathing. “God, you fucking creep. I’m _busy_ ,” he grumbles. Then he pauses and, to Peter’s surprise, slowly relaxes his shoulders. He adds more carefully, “Actually, I’m...revising one section of my research to talk more about the effects of Latin morphology, specifically, on the duration of improvised magical spells.”

Peter stills, understanding the admission for what it is: a truce. It’s Stiles, freely offering information as a show of good will. A good sign. He hums, pressing his mouth into the side of Stiles’s neck. “Your advisor is a mage?”

Stiles is the tiniest bit stiff under his touch still, but not so much that he won’t lean into the kiss. “A witch. That’s the closest you can get to a mage as a professor without going overseas. That’s why I’m here for college.” Stiles sweeps a hand over his notes. Spread across the table in messy patches are pages upon pages of Latin writing. “Not every university offers a degree in Latin these days, you know? Dead language and all that.” He sighs, tapping his phone to check the time. “Peter, I really do need to work. I have to be ready in fifteen minutes.”

“Given that everything we both said yesterday is true, I think this is an important conversation to have,” Peter murmurs. In their current positions, he likely has Stiles at a disadvantage (“ _likely”_ only because Peter still isn’t sure of the extent of Stiles’s magic). He’s half plastered against Stiles’s back, the hug allowing him to wrap his hands (and, of course, the claws they contain) over Stiles’s chest. Even so, Stiles shows no outward signs of worry in spite of the fact that Peter confirmed last night that he’s certainly more dangerous than Stiles knew going into this a few weeks ago. There’s only a little tension down Stiles’s spine now, and it isn’t entirely unlike the way he feels when they’re together in bed—taut with anticipation.

It’s entirely possible that Stiles thinks his magic can best Peter. Or that he doesn’t think Peter would deign to attack him in the open. Or that he thinks Peter won’t attack him at all.

“I need you to give me a little more,” Peter adds when Stiles weighs his options for too long. “You must understand that it’s not just me I have to consider. I have a family to protect. A family you now know.”

“Yeah, but I was going to do it _later_. Tonight.” Stiles sighs again, frustrated, and falls silent for a time. “I can’t tell you anything that isn’t about me,” he offers at last.

It’s a start, though Peter isn’t sure why this is the line he’s chosen to draw in the sand. Regardless, he nods in agreement and slides over to sit next to Stiles on the bench seat, leaning a little against the table and angling himself to consider the mage beside him.

Though Peter rarely feels the emotion himself, he is a connoisseur of guilt. When people are caught in the act and trying to lie anyway, certain nervous tics creep into their habitual behavior. Quiet people rattle off sudden tirades, boisterous people grow watchful and meditative. Even without their heartbeats thrumming in anxiety, they shift uneasily or won’t meet his eye. Or they stammer in fear, knowing very well what’s coming to them.

Stiles is none of those things. It’s possible it’s just that he doesn’t know the fate that _could_ come to him if he were ever to betray the Hales, but Peter doubts that’s the case. Stiles sits before him the same as ever: his stupid cute nose and the terrible flannels that somehow work for him, his eyes a little wan and tired looking, the ink stains on his fingers, the defiant incline of his jaw. So far, at least, he hasn’t regressed into his own head to calculate how to get out of here alive, or slowed his responses to moderate his words with care. His heartbeat has remained steady.

“Alright.” Peter says at last. “Tell me about _you_ , then. Since we’ve apparently been sleeping together for weeks and yet I seem to know very little about you.”

Stiles snorts. “ _You_ know nothing about _me?_ How ‘bout, let’s start with how _I_ knew nothing about your super-secret crime family. Again, that seems pretty freaking important to mention.” Stiles retorts. “When were you going to tell me that?”

“How was I supposed to tell you that?” Peter argues, irritated by the accusation in spite of himself. “At what point does it become acceptable to slip that sort of thing into a dinner conversation?”

“I don’t know! But it would have been nice to know that your whole restaurant setup is _dangerous_.”

“You aren’t in danger,” Peter scoffs. “No one under the diner roof will hurt you. It’s probably one of the safest places in the city. Besides the fact that you hardly seem defenseless,” he adds.

“Uh-huh. You’re running a business that smuggles all kinds of magic shit, probably drugs too. There’s the money laundering, and probably a buttload of other stuff I don’t even know about. Plus your werewolf pack—your _mob_ —is constantly clashing with the _Argents,_ one of the most ruthless criminal organizations in the country right now. You guys might not be all over the papers, but they sure are,” he adds, possibly mistaking Peter’s intrigued expression for annoyance. The vehemence with which he speaks of the Argents, Peter decides, is very reassuring. This whole conversation is very reassuring, if he’s honest—Stiles, gesturing as wildly as always, the familiar cadence of his voice. “I mean, this is the kind of thing you tell someone you’re—you know, sleeping with! Right up there with, like, ‘Hey, I have an STI’ or something like that!”

Peter cocks his head, unable to help himself. “Are you comparing—”

Stiles groans. “ _Shut up_.”

“You might be interested to know know that werewolves can’t get STIs, by the way—”

“You know what I mean! It’s just as a general, ‘just so you know’ kind of courtesy thing, like anything else!” Stiles retorts hotly, his face pink from either anger or embarrassment. “Although...that would have been great to freaking know before we used all those condoms,” he adds, and then facepalms. When he finally looks up, he’s glaring once more. “Besides,” he adds stubbornly, the flush still lingering at his ears, “don’t _I_ get to decide how much danger is an acceptable amount to tolerate in my life?”

This statement prompts Peter to remember that even as _he_ finds Stiles’s habitual mannerisms (not to mention his steady heartbeat) increasingly reassuring, _Stiles_ could easily come out of this discussion having decided that Peter is much more trouble than he’s worth. After all, by the sounds of things, Stiles hadn’t exactly signed up for a relationship with a werewolf with mafia ties, especially not one so prone to stalking his bedmate through the night streets.

Peter still isn’t sure what Stiles is up to, but he finds the idea of Stiles’s rejection displeasing regardless.“I suppose that’s reasonable.” Peter inclines his head, leaning forward pointedly. “Is this an intolerable amount, then? Enough to...change your mind?”

“Change my—about _you?_ ” Stiles opens and shuts his mouth. Then, looking frustrated, he leans his elbow onto the table, staring at Peter as he works out an answer. While he thinks, Peter rests one hand lightly on Stiles’s knee, hoping to turn the table in his favor. “I don’t know,” Stiles says helplessly. “Maybe? I don’t actually know anything about you.”

Peter offers a sharp smile. “Based on all you’ve told me, I’d say you know a great deal about me.”

“Stop doing that thing where you look like you’re going to eat me,” Stiles snaps. “I know stuff, but nothing really _helpful_. Just dumb normal stuff. Like the fact that you’re a rich asshole who thinks he can have his way with everything, just by throwing money at it—like your stupid big bed, and your stupid big apartment, and five billion wine glasses for all the stupid rich people you’re too stuck up to even host there. And—and you’re this giant art snob, like it’s your _job_ or something, but it’s really only because Cora’s an art student and she’s drilled all that shit into your head. And, you know, I guess you have the best taste in coffee of anyone I’ve ever met,” he adds as an afterthought.

“You _guess?_ ” Peter asks, disgruntled. Catching himself, he adds, “But aren’t those kinds of things helpful in a way? Isn’t that how you get to know someone?” His hand has wandered up Stiles’s leg a little, his thumb drifting over Stiles’s inner thigh.

“You also have a really great dick,” Stiles spits out mulishly, like it’s an insult. For some reason this must be the deciding factor, though, because Stiles awkwardly squirms forward so that his legs are on either side of the bench, allowing him to face Peter, and then he throws one leg over Peter’s knee to get even closer. He’s remarkably fearless about it.

“I thought you were going to tell me about yourself?” Peter murmurs, resting his hands on Stiles’s hips now that he’s finally settled in place.

“Look. Fine. I’m studying Latin. Like I told you. But not because I have a boner for Pliny the Elder in his original language, obviously. It’s just that this is one of only three places in the world where you can study Latin as a basis for magecraft.”

Peter hums. “And somewhere in that magical background, you’ve learned some things about the supernatural as well.”

“Well, yeah. I figured out your whole werewolf thing on my own practically from day one, though. Isn’t hard if you know where to look. At first, I thought that _was_ the whole secret. I figured that’s why your family hangs around the place, because you’re all keeping your pack safe and maybe brawling with other packs or stuff like that, and it’s only normal to have packmates hang out around each other. And maybe you were so secretive about stuff because you just didn’t trust me enough to tell me yet, or didn’t know I wouldn’t freak out about supernatural shit. So I didn’t say anything. And then recently...well, the money laundering thing was more of a guess based on some other stuff. But without seeing you guys’ books there was no way to confirm.”

“Was that an option on the table?” Peter asks dryly. “Prying into my briefcase?”

“I dunno. That part seemed kinda desperate.” Stiles is back to glaring at him now. “How else was I supposed to know?”

Peter lets out a long breath. Stiles has a way of redirecting the conversation back to Peter and away from himself. “Alright. You take classes here to learn magic? Like the spell you did with the fire on your hands?”

“Fuck no,” Stiles scoffs. “It’s just...magical theory, with two of my professors. And the thesis is obviously on the down low for the majority of the staff—and even when I talk about it with most people I say it’s on Latin medieval rites, which isn’t technically untrue, but there’s a ton of more modern applications. Anyway, I learned all the practical stuff myself. Probably shows,” he admits. “If you’re serious about this stuff, you can apprentice to a mage or witch early on, depending on whatever kind of magic you’re looking for, but I was a late bloomer. Didn’t really know I had a gift until I was partway through high school.”

“But you have a baseline in druidic magic.”

Stiles quirks a head at him, probably now wondering if—or more likely, _how much_ —Peter has snooped through his stuff. “Yeah, I’m good with druidic rituals ‘cause they’re way easier to pick up. There are a thousand books published on druidic stuff, but the number of people who can do magecraft is way smaller. Plus it’s more complicated. More dangerous.

“I guess that’s why people seem to want you to jump through flaming hoops if you want to get your hands on some ancient magecraft scroll. Or they go for the modernized version of hoop-jumping, which I like to call ‘paying college tuition.’ But anyway, I’m going for magecraft, because it’s—in a way, it’s more like you’re creating your own spells as you go. No memorized rituals. It’s a lot messier, more spontaneous. Harder. Right now, I can’t do much safely or consistently. I’m just really good at concealment. You know, hiding stuff. And people, obviously.”

“I’ve noticed. You also seem to be good with firepower.”

Stiles snorts. “Sure, I have one all-purpose offensive spell. Gets me out of a bind every now and then when someone thinks they can back me into a wall,” he adds pointedly.

“You seem to like it most of the time when I back you into walls,” Peter replies evenly, smirking. Stiles’s face goes a little pink again, and Peter presses his advantage, squeezing his thigh. “Alright. All of this is fascinating, and I say that in all seriousness,” he adds, though Stiles squints at him as if he isn’t sure Peter isn’t being sarcastic anyway. “But there are a few things I need to know. I understand now that you can use magic, and you’ve apparently somehow used it to worm out some of our secrets—but you haven’t done so alone. I get that you might be protecting a source. Or protecting the late Mr. Daehler, perhaps," he adds in distaste, catching Stiles's frown. "But again, I'm protecting people as well. And I need to know how you've learned what you've learned. You need to understand that for us, an unknown leak of any kind is dangerous.” He adds reasonably, running his thumb up the inseam of Stiles’s jeans.

Stiles watches his hand. Then glares up at Peter and then away, pressing his fingers to his temple. “Ugh, we are _so_ not doing this,” he mutters under his breath, so low that Peter has to strain to hear it. “This isn’t up to you.”

Peter blinks, but he’s gotten much better at catching onto Stiles’s tangents. “Are you talking to your dick again?”

“It’s hard to think when you’re—doing stuff!” Stiles hisses defensively, plucking Peter’s hand from his leg and tossing it aside. Peter smiles, smug. “Besides. I’m still pissed at you for not telling me all this.”

“Like...me being a werewolf.” Peter cocks his head. “Is that the problem?”

“No, Peter!” Stiles cries in exasperation. “Like you being in the mob! The _head_ of the mob, in the middle of my diner! It would have been great to know!”

Peter stares, because they’ve already been over this part, and he’s not sure why they’ve circled back. Then he again follows Stiles’s logic to make the necessary leap, smirking. “Are you less angry about me running a crime family, and more about the money laundering in connection with the Moonrise?”

“It’s my _favorite diner,_ you asshole! That’s where I get all of my best and sometimes _only_ work done on this stupid thesis that’s eating away my entire life, and I swear to god—I mean, what if the cops come for you? What if your mafia stuff means _the whole diner_ gets shut down? Did you ever think about that?”

“‘Did I ever think about that?’” Peter repeats sardonically to himself.

“What would I even do?” Stiles continues, as if Peter hadn’t spoken. “Go back to freaking _Sal’s Kitchen_ on thirty-fourth? I’d rather burn in hell.”

“Those are some strong feelings.”

“Well, you have some strong fucking coffee.”

Peter nods, a little astonished to find a warm sense of fondness settling over him. _I did say I had no idea where this conversation was going to go,_ he thinks wryly. He does still need answers, though, and understanding Stiles’s motivations gives him an idea. Gently, he gathers Stiles’s hands in his. “Stiles,” he begins soberly, “Like I’ve said, I want to protect my pack and everyone in it. It’s _literally_ my job as enforcer. It’s what I do every night. But I also promise you, right now, that I will protect this diner. I want to make sure it stays as it is, just as much as you do.”

“I know. But—”

“But to do that, I need certain information.”

That’s when Stiles sees where this is going. “Peter,” he scowls.

“I need to have _all_ the cards—”

“That’s not—”

“—or I can’t see the full picture. And _maybe,_ without that picture, things like the diner slip out of my hands.”

Stiles is scowling more deeply now, and he makes a halfhearted attempt to tug his hands out of Peter’s grasp. “That’s not fair,” he finally manages.

“So help me help your favorite diner—”

“You _fucking_ asshole.”

“—and tell me what’s really going on with you. Everything.”

Stiles sighs again, more dramatically this time.

“Because whatever it is, whatever’s going on, I will protect it too. Whoever it is. And I will protect _you_.”

Peter makes sure to say the last part as seriously as he can, careful to catch Stiles’s eye. It seems to make Stiles pause, at least, to hear his genuine tone. He chews his lip, and Peter thinks he can see the moment when Stiles makes his decision, a relaxing of his spine. “I don’t need protection,” he says defiantly. “But anyway: _my_ secrets, I share for free, but the rest of it isn’t just my secret. It also doesn’t necessarily pertain to you or your pack, like, at _all,_ you snooping dickface. I share the rest with a friend, and so I have to…” he stares at Peter, long and calculating. “I have to ask,” he offers, scrubbing a hand over his face. “It isn’t fair otherwise.”

He finally tugs a hand away to tap his phone. On seeing the time, he mutters something distinctly insulting under his breath. “I _really_ have to go now. And I’m wildly unprepared for this meeting, so thanks a lot for that. But...look, I’ll ask. And I’ll see you tonight at the diner. Promise.”

Stiles pulls away slowly and begins to gather up his books, frowning at the table as he does. Peter watches him do it, a little surprised (though not unpleasantly) by the fact that he does, in fact, trust Stiles to be telling the truth at this point. Stiles will work with him on this, and he won’t just run off to spill the family secrets like some loose cannon. He _can_ disappear at will, _can_ use magic to blast Peter aside, but that doesn’t mean that he _will_.

When Stiles is finally done, his books and papers all packed away, he toys with the straps of his backpack for a moment. “Um,” he says, shifting uncertainly in place. “Are we still okay, though? Like...” He gestures between them vaguely.

Peter stands and tugs him closer for a kiss. “For now,” he says honestly. “But it depends on what I learn.”

Stiles chews his lip. “And if you don’t like what you learn?”

“Then we’ll see.”

Stiles nods slowly. “I guess we will.”

~*~

Somehow, their night at Moonrise may as well have been any other. Peter needn’t have worried that Stiles might accidentally reveal his new knowledge of the Hale outfit to onlookers, because for all intents and purposes they act as if nothing has changed between them at all. They work at their separate booths, Peter rearranging his notes on the glossy tabletop and Stiles bathed in the red neon of the sign at the window. And then, when Peter has finished for the night, he heads over to the front table, where Stiles blinks up at him before offering a hesitant smile.

In his apartment, Peter pins Stiles’s wrists over his head as he fucks slowly into him, setting a pace that’s purposefully a little too gentle, a little too slow to give Stiles what he needs, watching Stiles writhe beneath him in search of friction. Stiles moans his name aloud, working his hands out from Peter’s grasp until he can squeeze Peter’s hands in either desperation or punishment, so tightly that he might have cut off his circulation if Peter weren’t a wolf.

Later, as his breathing returns to normal, Stiles tugs one of Peter’s hands in front of his face. He runs his fingers along Peter’s knuckles, brushes them against the curves of his fingernails.

“Can you change it?” he asks, and it takes Peter a moment to understand what Stiles means. Frowning but curious, he obediently lets his claws out, watching as Stiles traces the length of them with his own fingers, down to where they dip into sharp points.

“You would have had to kill me, if I weren’t the kind of person who can keep a secret,” he says, but his voice is without fear. It’s almost thoughtful. As if he knows somehow that Peter has already made up his mind about him.

“If you were going to take the information to the wrong people, I might have had to make a difficult decision,” he admits, not entirely sure he would have managed to kill Stiles when it came down to that.

Stiles snorts. “You never say what you actually mean. It’s like sleeping with a politician.”

“Says someone who still won’t tell me what he does every night,” Peter counters.

“Touché.” Stiles squirms. “For what it’s worth, though, I only picked the whole double-speak thing up from _you._ I never used to...I mean, I never really had anyone to hide it from. I never had anyone who would ask me where I was going or what I was doing. It never mattered.” He drops Peter’s hand, letting it fall back into place on his chest, and Peter lets the claws recede.

In a way, Peter realizes, Stiles is in a similar position to his own. He’s navigating all of this for the first time, trying to decide if he’s found someone he trusts enough to open up to and, once that decision is made, how exactly to go about doing that. And how to give away a secret he’s guarded closely for so long.

“Aside from Lydia,” Stiles adds out of nowhere, “but she’s part of it, so.”

“Lydia,” Peter murmurs. The name is unfamiliar.

Stiles rolls over to face him, so close that their noses are nearly touching. “Come with me tonight.” His voice is low, nearly a whisper, like this too is a secret he has to slip into the conversation. “I asked her if we could explain it to you, and we were going to do it at the diner tomorrow, but...I think it'll be easier to explain in person. I can text her that you’ll come tonight. Or, well, this morning. Right now.”

His expression is earnest, maybe even a little hopeful. Peter frowns, again weighing his long habit of self-preservation, particularly an exposure to an unknown stranger without anyone in the pack to back him up. If one of the Hale betas so much as mentioned _thinking_ about what Peter’s considering, he’d have put them on probation and retraining before the sentence even left their mouth.

And yet here he is.

Stiles seems to understand his hesitance. “Hey,” he murmurs suddenly. “You can hear my heartbeat, right? I...I didn’t know a ton about you guys, but I’ve been looking more stuff up. It’s hard to...I mean a lot of the books are wrong about some stuff, so—”

“I can hear your heart,” Peter confirms, cutting Stiles off before he can ramble on.

Stiles nods, then pulls Peter’s hand back up to lay it against his chest. “I am not planning to hurt you or your family,” he says solemnly. “I’m not bringing you somewhere to trick you or trap you. It’s just…” He shrugs awkwardly, one shoulder still pressed into the mattress. “This is the easiest way to give you the answers to your questions. Or, if not the easiest, maybe the best. Somewhere more neutral, away from your whole...criminal empire vibe.”

Peter studies him. “And your friend…?” he prompts.

“My friend isn’t planning to hurt you either. I trust her with my life. And yours. She’s just looking out for the two of us, because she doesn’t know you like I do, and she wants to make sure I’m not falling for—that I’m not actually thinking with my dick,” he fumbles. Then he sighs. “Look, this may come as a huge surprise, but I don’t always make the _best_ decisions. I’m just a dumbass uni student whose friend dragged him into creepy shit, okay?”

His heart jumps the slightest bit at the last statement, and Peter frowns. Stiles, however, rolls his eyes at this and smiles.

“Damn it, no bullshit gets through, huh? Okay, yeah. I’m a dumbass student who wandered into creepy shit with his eyes wide open. That’s the truth. But really, Peter,” he adds, his solemnity still surprising Peter, “I wouldn’t do anything to hurt you.” Finally finished, he releases Peter’s hand.

Peter uses it to smooth a flyaway curl beside Stiles’s ear. “So very formal,” he offers lightly.

“Yeah, for the last fucking time,” Stiles jokes. “No formality after this. And no more _politics_ ,” he adds, lightly punching Peter in the shoulder.

“No more politics,” Peter agrees.

Stiles flops onto his back once more, yawning and then falling silent. He really does seem tired, his eyes nearly fluttering closed as he sinks into the mattress beside Peter. But he seems to allow himself just a few moments of respite before he shakes himself awake, clawing his way out of the blankets and dragging himself from the bed. “Okay. Are you coming?” he asks, rummaging around for his clothes on the floor.

Peter wordlessly rises to follow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh yeah so I forgot I made BH into a lake town, because what mob story doesn't have people dumping stuff into bodies of water?
> 
> Also I don't even know where that campus convo with Peter and Stiles came from - it went so off the rails from my original plan, but it was intensely fun to write anyway. Mostly because one thing I wanted to carry over from the first story in this series is the constant threat of Stiles putting his foot in his mouth :) Hopefully it still makes sense after all my editing, because at this point I've honestly stared at it for way too long.
> 
> Thanks as always for reading!


	3. Interviews

The Hale family is immune to a great many things.

Their solid public standing, with Peter acting as a financial consultant for a few big-name firms and Talia working on the city council, affords them a certain degree of protection. Beacon Hills may have seen explosive growth in the last decades, but in many respects it still clings to its small-town customs. And the Hale family is a well-established and widely respected facet of that town, and thus as firmly rooted in the landscape of the new city as the Nemeton itself.

An imperious glare from Talia gets their minor crimes tossed out of court. Police who pull Derek over for speeding send him off with a request to “thank your uncle for donating to the memorial fund.” Even their more recognizable betas—like Boyd, increasingly known for running their nightclub downtown, and Erica, who practically manages the Moonrise Diner in addition to her work on Derek’s team—find themselves offered VIP treatment on occasion.

For all this, however, the Hale family’s influence has never extended to the docks. That’s Argent territory, through and through.

The municipal dock workers, every one of them on the Argent payroll, have a reputation for being close-knit and tight-lipped. They’re famously suspicious of (and hostile toward) any intruder not wearing their grey uniform coveralls, up to and including city meter maids and cops. Peter has long turned up his nose at the instances of distinctly _dis_ organized crime that take place when the dock workers get riled up. Usually, that includes brutal beatings or even suspected murders when an outsider sticks their nose where it doesn’t belong.

But what makes the Argents a true threat is their agenda.

The other families throughout the state, including the Hale family, are driven by simple needs: make money, and protect their own. They’re classic goals. Traditional. And while each family tackles these goals in different ways, at the end of the day, they all behave in ways Peter can predict.

The Argents, on the other hand, are after _more_. That’s not to say they aren’t raking in cash, and they’d fight to the death to protect their own. But they’re also relentless to the point of insanity on one point: any being less than human is to be hunted. It’s an agenda they push onto every lackey who joins, and one they fund through the trafficking of arms, drugs, magical goods, sex workers, and supernatural beings.

They’d probably love nothing more than to test their enhanced wolfsbane bullets on a Hale werewolf. Especially one stupid enough to wander into their territory in the dead of night.

If anyone were to catch Peter out here on the docks, he’d be at the bottom of the lake by morning. Along with Stiles himself, for good measure.

An open expanse of concrete stretches toward the piers lining the lake, where ghostly white houseboats and fishing trawlers rock gently in their slips. Further westward, the docks grow more industrial: in the distance is the dark girth of warehouses against the black, starry sky, and the light of the moon shimmers along neat rows of shipping containers between them. In the early hours of the morning, this place is nearly abandoned, but Peter can hear the shuffling of movement somewhere in the buildings nearby. The cool breeze carries the scent of fish and the sound of music from a distant boat.

“This is hardly where I hoped you’d lead me,” he murmurs to Stiles, glancing over his shoulder. They abandoned Peter’s car a few streets back to wind nearer on foot, and Peter scans the darkness for any sign of someone following.

“Yeah, I kind of figured,” Stiles replies distractedly, his pace slowing as he glances out at the concrete.

They’re still far from the lighted piers that branch into the inky water. And there’s nothing to hide behind as they venture across the open stretch of pavement before them. It’s designed that way, Peter imagines. Sentries will be watching on the off-chance that anyone’s foolish enough to creep out into the open, ready to disarm them before they can delve further into the heart of the Argent territory.

Stiles turns back to face him. “I know it’s not safe for you here,” he adds, holding out his hand. “But we won’t get caught. Promise.”

Peter glances down at it, thoughtful. When he finally takes it, Stiles mutters something unintelligible—Latin, maybe—and the air seems to shift around them. It’s strangely warm, as if Peter has stepped into a room with a fire blazing in a distant hearth. He blinks in surprise on finding that Stiles’s hand carries the very faint, nearly translucent glow of the magic he’d used before. It’s not the bright, roaring flames but something more subtle, something that spills over Peter’s hand as he strains to see it.

“What is this?” he demands, pulling up their joined hands to inspect them more closely.

“I told you before,” Stiles says with a telling grin. “I’m good at hiding things.” Before Peter can react, he tugs him out from the meager cover provided by the shadowy outbuildings.

The hairs on the back of Peter’s neck stand on end with the sudden exposure, and he can’t help but glance up and down the dock. Now that they’re in the open, he can make out a few workers farther off, little more than washed-out smudges in the moonlight. It’s unlikely they’ve been spotted yet, but Peter’s steps falter. Stiles squeezes his hand, and when Peter turns to him, he pointedly glances at their joined hands.

“It’s...like when you vanished before,” Peter says slowly. But the flames are gone, and there’s nothing different about the appearance of their skin anymore, nothing to suggest the invisibility spell Peter knows Stiles is capable of. “Isn’t it?”

“ _We’re_ vanished,” Stiles confirms mischievously. Then he sobers, glancing out at the boats farther off. “Come on.”

They make their way onto the lighted docks, Stiles frowning down at the wood underfoot. When Peter glances down as well, he realizes that their bodies cast no shadows. The glow of the lamplight overhead spills across the weather-rough surface, unbroken. He’s so distracted by this that he almost doesn’t notice a dock worker passing nearby until the man is almost upon them, his meaty hands brushing dirt off of his coveralls.

Stiles catches Peter’s gaze and presses a finger to his lips, and the man walks off without so much as a glance.

 _An impressive talent to have,_ Peter thinks hungrily, cataloguing the properties of this trick: they obviously can’t be seen, but since Stiles is gesturing for quiet, it appears that they can be heard.

Back in the alley, though, Peter _knows_ he hadn’t been able to smell Stiles at all, or to hear his heartbeat. But he can smell and hear Stiles now, the faint traces of his anticipation echoed in the slight uptick to his heartbeat. Maybe those things are only possible now that they are joined under the same spell?

As they walk further on, Peter marvels that they might very well sneak into the heart of Argent territory with no one the wiser. He considers the ramifications of this new power, of what _he_ would do with it.

When at last Stiles peers over his shoulder and deems them far enough away from any potential prying ears, he shifts closer and says in a low voice, “I can usually hide us from stuff other than sight—sound too, or smell. But it’s really fucking exhausting, so I only do that when I need to. Not for rando people with no reason to suspect someone’s around.”

He abruptly takes a right off of the dock, leading them down a wide pier. It’s lined on either end with small fishing trawlers, their cramped windows staring out like dark eyes. Peter stares back at them, suspicious, as Stiles adds pointedly, “It’s usually only when some dick sends werewolf goons after me that I need the full package.”

Peter grunts. “Sounds like a real control freak,” he offers diplomatically.

“He is,” Stiles replies, his voice still low, “but I guess he grows on you after a while.”

They continue down the pier. Halfway through lies a shadowy maintenance cabin whose lights are all extinguished for the night. It’s much darker here, though a lamppost at the very end of the dock casts a yellow glow across the edge. When Stiles comes to a stop under the light, Peter frowns and looks around. The slips around them are empty, and the black water is high against the wood, lapping the pilings below.

“Yep, this is him,” Stiles says suddenly, and Peter blinks. “Yes, al _right._ Noted.”

“This is...who?”

“Oh—wait a sec,” Stiles replies, shaking his head. “I’m still…” He cuts himself off and mutters again under his breath.

A second later, a girl blinks into view, just as Stiles had yesterday. She’s around Stiles’s age, with red hair spilling down her back. Despite their surroundings, she’s dressed in a nice blue dress and cardigan, along with a pair of designer boots. One hand is on her hip, and the other hugs a pair of notebooks to her chest. She glares at Peter.

“I still don’t like this,” she grumbles to Stiles, though her grimace seems to indicate that she’s resigned to whatever “this” is.

“Again. Noted,” Stiles replies with a long-suffering sigh. He untangles his hand from Peter’s, clearing his throat. “Lydia, Peter. Obviously. Peter, this is my best friend Lydia.”

“A pleasure,” Peter murmurs, offering a diplomatic smile. Now that Stiles’s spell is lifted, he can smell that this is clearly the person whose scent Stiles often carries, someone important to him. And even putting the current circumstances aside it seems prudent to get on her good side. By her deepening grimace, he seems to be failing already—but the night is young. “So,” he adds, “why are we all gathered here, then?”

Lydia turns her glare onto Stiles. She thrusts the notebooks at him, leaving him to scramble to hold them, and lowers herself onto the pier to sit. “Because it’s where the bodies usually are.”

“Excuse me?”

Something passes between Stiles and Lydia, some complex unspoken message that Peter can’t translate. In Lydia’s raised eyebrows, however, Peter does think he recognizes an _are you absolutely sure?_ and straightens a little, doing his best to look as pleasantly unassuming as he can.

At last, Lydia scowls, rearranging the folds of her dress. “I’m a banshee,” she says at last, tossing her head up to glower defiantly up at Peter. “Dead people are kind of my thing.”

Peter considers her for a long moment, struggling to hide his surprise. It takes him a beat to revise his concept of banshees as stereotypical skeletal women in white—after all, werewolves are hardly fur-covered monsters, at least not when they don’t want to be. He processes the implications of this announcement.

And the context of their current location.

“So this _is_ where the Argents dispose of their bodies,” he guesses slowly. “Talia and I have always suspected, but…”

Stiles is nodding absently. “It’s classic, right? Cement blocks on their feet. Dump them into the pier. _Bam._ ‘Murder? What murder?’”

“That’s only for the ones they don’t care about as much,” Lydia adds, turning to glance briefly into the ink-black waves. “They take the important ones out on a boat, but they don’t come back with them.”

“But those guys are impossible for us to process. Obviously.”

“To ‘process’?” Peter narrows his eyes. “What does this have to do with the leak? The way you learned about us?”

“We’re getting there,” Stiles says.

“I like to ask them a few questions,” Lydia replies, and the way she smiles reminds Peter of the way Stiles does sometimes—a little sharp around the edges. He wonders if he learned it from her or the other way around. “They’re usually very willing to talk. At least once they realize it might eventually help get the assholes who killed them behind bars.”

“Did I mention,” Stiles adds cheerfully, seeming to take some perverse pleasure in the fact that Peter is obviously still trying to piece all this together as they go, “that Lydia’s at university too?”

“Journalism,” Lydia adds. “I have an internship at The Beacon Herald. And if I’m a little _too_ familiar with the process of slipping anonymous tips to the team on the crime beat…”

“You’re communing with the dead,” Peter works out slowly. “And passing along their insights to the living. So when you said Matt Daehler told you who we are, this is what you meant. You said ‘he’s dead _now_.’ But he was also dead when you first met him.”

Stiles nods. “I think it’s the first time we interviewed someone from _your_ whole gang thing.” He looks at Lydia for confirmation.

“It was. I guess the Argents have a hard time getting their hands on your pack. Usually it’s just random people who rub them the wrong way or get too close. Or a loose end they want to tie up to keep things from getting messy. So the victims don’t always have anything helpful to say. Most of the time, they barely know enough to make it worth the trip here,” she adds flippantly, and Stiles nods along. “But every once in a while…” she shrugs. “It pays off in unexpected ways. So we visit pretty often, just in case there’s someone worth the time.”

“Worth the time for what?”

Another unreadable look passes between the two of them. “Eventually,” Stiles says solemnly, “we’ll have enough to get a full story. With enough evidence to get some of the Argents arrested.”

Peter very nearly laughs at their determined expressions, though it’s more from surprise than disbelief. Fortunately, he manages to catch himself, as he has the feeling it wouldn’t go over well. _I still never know where these conversations are going to go,_ he thinks, and he’s not sure it’s such a terrible thing. “To have them arrested,” he repeats at last, intrigued. He settles his hands in his pockets and quirks his head at them. “Why? Not out of the kindness of your hearts, surely.”

Stiles gives him a flat look, but Lydia nods at him. “Because a while ago, I found the dead body of a girl they sold into servitude,” she states bluntly. “Her name was Heather Somerson.”

“She was a friend of ours from way back,” Stiles adds. He leans back against the guardrail. “She was...we were all pretty close, since we were in diapers. She disappeared the summer before junior year, around the time she told us her family got into some money troubles. Serious enough that her parents were acting weird. Kind of paranoid. Late-night arguments with strangers on the porch. That kind of thing.”

“We found her buried in a shallow grave near a motel outside of town. It was the first time I really knew anything about magic, or my powers, and...” Lydia’s looking away, out into the dark water, and Stiles’s arms are crossed over his chest, over the notebooks. Peter gets the feeling there’s a lot more of the story they’re remembering in the silence right now. A lot they’re glossing over. “When we found her body, she was talking about how her family handed her over to the Argents when they couldn’t pay back their debts,” Lydia adds grimly, “and she tried to get away. She told us what Gerard Argent did to her, all for the crime of making him look weak. For breaking free and running into the woods, and…”

She doesn’t continue. Stiles picks up the thread of the story again, but it takes him a beat to do so. “It was just a simple way to get justice at first. We were in high school then, and just starting to figure out what we could do, and we thought we could just...find this Gerard guy, no big deal,” he says sardonically, snorting. “We knew it wouldn’t _change_ anything, but it felt like the one good thing we could do, just find out what happened, get his info, and drop it off to the right person so they could put him behind bars. It was supposed to be straightforward, but somewhere along the way, we got wrapped up in all _this_.”

“And now,” Lydia remarks, gesturing to the notebooks Stiles is holding, “We have all this info on who’s coming and going, and people they’ve killed over the drug smuggling and human trafficking and…” she trails off, looking Peter up and down.

“And most recently the whole _magical underground_ thing,” Stiles finishes. “Where all the weird, theoretical shit from Intro to Spellwork 101 turns out to be, like... _actual current events_. Like how historical fights between werewolves and hunters aren’t actually _history_. Meaning the rando you meet in a diner can be both a werewolf _and_ a mob boss.”

“No, that’s literally only the rando _you_ could meet at a diner,” Lydia snarks.

Stiles sighs. “Yeah, I know. It’s just my luck.”

“We didn’t really learn that part until we started asking the right questions, though.” Lydia adds, before Peter can shoot Stiles a sufficiently wounded look. “Mostly, we’ve been fumbling through it all, thinking this was normal human gang violence stuff. Nowadays, we’re closer to understanding, but no closer to anything else. We’ve got nothing solid enough to convince a judge. Especially when our only evidence is eyewitness testimony from the dead, nothing concrete. Plus, the most compelling evidence—the bodies and guns they keep tossing into the lake—those are things we’ll never be able to get anyone to look into, not as long as the Argents are running these docks.”

When the silence stretches on for long enough to make it clear that they’re done, Peter takes a moment to let the weight of all they’ve said sink onto him. His conclusions draw his frown lower and lower. “You’re on a _crusade_ ,” he begins flatly, “to put the Argent family away. _The two of you._ A pair of college students, a pair of _human_ college students. With no training. No backup.”

“We’re human, but we’re not _normal_ humans. Don’t make it sound so stupid,” Stiles retorts. “Sure, we can’t run in and claw them up until they give us answers, but—well, the magic of it, literally, is that we can’t be caught. We can take as much time as we want. We can get answers from people they thought they were silencing. And best of all, _they don’t even know we’re looking_. There’s no danger. Just...slow and steady.”

“And eventually, we’ll win.”

He and Lydia look determined once more, despite the fact that everything coming out of their mouths seems completely ludicrous. Not to mention a little too idealistic. Even so, Peter understands the urge, the ambition. And he also understands that part of the reason Stiles brought him here to the docks instead of explaining all of this in the diner is to offer proof.

Lydia’s a banshee, and this is where she works.

“Alright,” Peter says slowly. “I’ll bite. Show me how you do it.”

“Then sit down,” Lydia retorts instantly, turning her back on him and peering into the water again, “and _shut up._ ”

~*~

If Peter didn’t know any better, he’d swear he was being conned.

Lydia spends the next twenty minutes talking to thin air, as if there’s actually someone lingering in the open waters off the edge of the dock. For his part, Stiles sits on the wood beside her, cracking open one of the notebooks and listening intently, Peter assumes, to the same one-sided conversation Peter’s getting.

It’s Daehler they’re talking to still. Allegedly. Lydia wants to know what he knows about the Argents’ movements, what he saw or heard before he died, and specifically who tossed him into the waters of the lake. She circles back to the same questions with remarkable patience, repeating herself often and cocking her head to listen to the responses. And though Peter can’t hear the responses, there clearly _are_ eventual responses of some kind: Lydia nods every now and then and focuses her attention outward, her expression twisting or head cocking in thought.

She also brooks no interruptions or questions from Peter whatsoever. After just a few minutes, the only words spoken are her questions to Daehler and her occasional spoken notes about his responses for Stiles to jot down.

Taking pity on Peter when Lydia seems sufficiently distracted, Stiles leans in to answer the last question Peter had managed before Lydia silenced him with a glare: “Dying is hard on people, I guess. I mean...obviously,” he says wryly, his words almost a whisper to be certain he won’t distract Lydia from her task. “It just—it rattles them. They forget things, or lose parts of themselves. Sometimes they have a hard time staying, you know, _present._ Sometimes Lydia can’t even get them to talk.”

“Which is why you’ve come back to ‘interview’ the same person more than once.”

“Yeah. We do it whenever we aren’t sure if they have more to say.”

Peter hums, considering this, but that’s right at the moment when Lydia tries to press Daehler about why he turned on the Hale family in the first place. Peter cocks his head to listen intently.

 _Money_ appears to be the answer, several minutes later—the most boring and disappointing reason Peter’s ever heard—and he distracts himself for some time in outlining another argument to Talia and Derek, demanding that none of their recruits be allowed any taste for gambling. After all, a beta’s loyalty should be to the Hale family above all else. Not a pair of dice.

Once the novelty of Peter’s presence wears off, Stiles settles back into what must be his customary routine, which involves sitting and fidgeting and gnawing the end of his pen like a restless child, waiting for Lydia to mutter notes out of the corner of her mouth. In the space in between those things, he sags boredly against Peter or props his head up on the metal guardrail. It’s around five in the morning now, and Peter realizes now how tiring Stiles’s schedule must be—sleeping the day away, waking for classes and academic meetings, homework at the diner, and nights of interviews at the docks.

It’s very grim, Peter decides. Not only the part where they’re witnesses to the dead every evening, right on the turf of a violent criminal organization, but the part where even their best efforts have garnered them nothing. The police would demand hard evidence over hearsay, and based on what little he’s heard tonight, Stiles and Lydia aren’t finding any smoking guns. Nothing except knowledge they must keep to themselves, knowledge that always comes too late to be useful.

And yet they come here anyway. Silent and perfectly concealed from harm. It’s strange: even now, Peter can’t quite wrap his head around the fact that they’re actually hidden, and he finds himself turning every now and then to glance down the darkened stretch of the dock, to make sure they truly are alone.

“Most areas of the docks seem to close up for the night around four,” Stiles murmurs out of the corner of his mouth the sixth or seventh time Peter turns to look. “It’s just a skeleton crew right now, until the whole place gets back up and running at six. So we hang out in that window of time. But we can’t always finish up all of Lydia’s questions before the morning shift, especially if the person’s...you know. Not all there.”

Peter quirks his head. “You leave at six, even though you can hide yourselves?”

“Yeah, because—well, if I’m out here doing this all the time, it’s easier to only work at night when we just need visual concealment. If I’m doing auditory too, long-term, it’s way too much strain. Tried that before. Never again.”

Peter hums, filing this knowledge away, and Lydia silences them both with a warning glare before muttering a few more notes to Stiles, who dutifully writes them down. At this point, it would be a significant leap to say that they’re faking it—and Peter can’t imagine why they would possibly craft such a foolish, elaborate lie.

And once he’s accepted this, he can’t help but lean into it. “How can you be sure it’s really Daehler you’re talking to?” he asks suspiciously, once her questions seem to be winding down. The early spring sun has become a vague hint of purple on the horizon. “Unless you’ve met him before, he could be someone else claiming to be Daehler.”

“Because he looks like a photo we found of him online, and because it would be a stupid thing to lie about,” Lydia retorts, glaring at him again. Still, she dutifully repeats the question aloud. Then she rewords and repeats it several times, and it takes a few moments to receive an answer, but she at last turns to Peter with her eyebrows raised. “He says that when your nephew was training him, along with two other newly bitten betas who spent most of the session fist-fighting, you came in to recommend dumping all of them in a locked room on their first full moon to have them ‘duke it out.’”

Peter snorts, remembering. “They were terrible hotheads,” he replies. “It would have solved a lot of our problems.”

Stiles stares at him tiredly for a long moment before rolling his eyes. Peter ignores him. Now that he’s had the truth of this confirmed, there’s a much more pressing question. “Can you find out what he told the Argents about us specifically?”

“I got that out of him yesterday,” Lydia tells him, lifting an eyebrow.

 _And of course you would have_ , Peter realizes. _Yesterday, before you two could meet at the docks, I attacked Stiles in an alley._ In doing this, he’d erased all doubts about whether he belonged to a dangerous crime family, a family not dissimilar from the one Stiles and Lydia are so enmeshed in fighting. _Of course they would have asked questions about us,_ Peter thinks. _They’d have to decide whether they needed to protect themselves further._

“Oh?” he says slowly, gaze drifting over to where Stiles sits, eyes at half-mast. He decides that the fact that they’ve allowed him here at all is a good sign. “And what did you find?”

“Apparently, it was only the Argent bribes that made him switch sides, not a grudge against your family. Lucky for you, Daehler obviously didn’t have much to offer the Argents, or he wouldn’t have ended up underwater for it. Hm…?” Lydia turns, looking out onto the water once more. When she turns back, her smirk has reappeared. “He may not say much, but he _does_ want it noted that your payment structure is ‘worse than shit.’”

“Well, it was _certainly_ never intended to support aspiring high-rollers,” Peter retorts with irritation, though he’s not sure Daehler can hear him. “Especially ones dragging the Hale name through the mud, brawling with every loss at the casino in Beacon Heights.”

“He did give away your betas’ patrol schedules, so you’ll want to change those as soon as you can,” she adds matter-of-factly. “The Argents dumped him not long after that—maybe because it’s hard to trust a traitor to stay put on his new side.” After a beat, she turns back to the inky water. “Sorry,” she adds, but she gives a flippant shrug that suggests she doesn’t really care. Peter decides he likes her very much.

“Alright, you know he’s Daehler,” he allows, looking out into the empty water as if he can see what Lydia does. “How can you be sure he’s telling the truth, though?”

“I can’t,” Lydia says slowly. “But they do. And it seems pretty stupid to lie about how you died after it’s already happened.” She shakes her head. “It doesn’t really matter, though. Not this time. Either way, it seems like the Argents really only killed him because he turned on _you_ without offering up enough helpful intel for them. And that doesn’t exactly help us get any closer to catching _them._ ” She stares out into the water for a long moment and then sighs, pulling her cardigan closer around her shoulders and climbing to her feet.

Peter hadn’t realized they were wrapping up. A glance at his watch reveals that it’s almost six. Stiles is nearly dozing, his cheek pressed into the guardrail, and Peter shakes his shoulder.

“Yes. When this is all said and done,” Lydia says into the water as Stiles allows Peter to pull him to his feet. “I’m sure Peter can make sure your mother knows what happened to you.”

She raises her eyebrows at Peter in question, and he nods in agreement. He may not have any particular affection for Daehler (objectively speaking, Peter believes that traitors are like tumors: best cut out immediately before their influence spreads). But Lydia seems like a good person to have on his side, and it’s a small concession to make.

“Good,” Lydia decides. “Let’s get this idiot to bed before he falls asleep on his feet.”

“Who’s sleeping?” Stiles asks, rubbing the red mark on his cheek as Lydia leads the way back. “And who’s an idiot?” he adds belatedly.

The docks are relatively empty, as they were before, though Peter catches sight of someone walking along the deck of one of the boats farther off. The sky is growing lighter to the east, deep red spilling over the horizon. It casts a warm glow over the docks now, making them seem marginally less haunting than they had when Peter and Stiles first arrived—or maybe the warmth is from Stiles’s spell. As they walk, Stiles is careful to stay between Lydia and Peter, much more alert now that they’re moving once more. The same strange, not-quite-there glow shimmers around one of his hands.

Peter, mulling everything over as they go, dutifully keeps quiet for Stiles until they have made their way across the concrete and back to the relative safety of the outbuildings. When Stiles eventually glances around to ensure he’s keeping close, he frowns at the expression on Peter’s face. “What?”

“I’m curious,” Peter murmurs levelly. “Now that you have your hands on the first dead ex-member of the Hale family, what’s to keep you from taking careful notes on the Hale family’s crimes and passing them along to...unwanted third parties? Surely you could press Daehler for details on our comings and goings, apart from what little was useful to the Argents.”

Lydia and Stiles walk side by side now, their expressions less wary than Peter might have guessed given the question. Even so, he pays careful attention to the beating of their hearts. “Because you aren’t dealing in human trafficking,” Lydia replies slowly. “And because you had nothing to do with Heather. As far as we know.”

“It’s as simple as that?”

“We can’t take on all of the crime families in the world,” Lydia replies sardonically. “Just one is enough, thanks.”

“Yeah, we’re not fucking _do-gooders_ ,” Stiles snorts, as if this had been in question. “This is just for Heather.”

“Besides, why would any of the stuff Daehler said be enough to constitute as evidence, from a legal standpoint?” Lydia adds practically. “Patrol schedules? Your payment structure? The magic shit you smuggle? None of that’s anything we could take to the cops even if we wanted.”

“And look, we’ve been going after the Argents for _ages_ with nothing to show for it. Going after you guys as well would make this a full-time job.”

Lydia makes a sound of irritation or maybe disgust. “No, thank you,” she says with an emphatic shudder. “The majority of the people I talk to are dead as it is; I don’t need more of them.”

“And word on the street is that most of your money is coming from stupidly overpriced moonflowers,” Stiles adds. “Which isn’t _illegal_ so much as it is a magical object the world at large can’t know about. Which…” he shrugs. “Eh. Grey area. And if that means you have a ton of money you have to legitimize through money laundering, then whatever. Even if it would look shady as fuck to an outsider.”

Lydia catches Peter’s dubious frown. “We _know_ this about you, but we didn’t take notes on it,” Lydia reminds him. “We don’t care.”

“I see...”

The empty streets near the warehouses slowly make way for busier ones within the city proper. At Stiles’s cue, they pause at one end of a building. He checks behind them in the dim street and then, probably recalling what kind of magical being he’s with, looks at Peter questioningly. Understanding the intention, Peter takes a beat to listen. “No one nearby,” he remarks after a moment.

Stiles mutters something unintelligible once more, and the warmth that has settled over Peter, which he’s by this point grown accustomed to, slowly recedes. Stiles sighs—or maybe yawns—and then he leads them out into the open. They’re visible again, Peter guesses, though it’s hard to tell when the only people nearby are rushing past in their cars.

Another idea occurs to Peter, though he’s at least managed to exhaust his list of questions about the safety of his pack. “If you’re going to continue this,” he begins thoughtfully, “there’s something I think you haven’t considered.”

Lydia is stuffing the notebooks into her purse. “What’s that?”

“Journalists and investigators get killed every day,” Peter remarks as they make their way across the street, heading in the general direction of his parked car. “In fact, one of Talia’s pet projects is donating to a fund that goes to the widows and families of journalists who died during investigations. It wouldn’t take much for the wrong person to start asking questions. And for the two of you to disappear.” He cocks his head. “A disappearance of the deadly variety,” he clarifies. “Not Stiles’s vanishing act.”

Lydia is frowning at him. “Is that...a threat?”

Stiles sighs. “No, that’s just how he talks sometimes. Let him finish.”

Peter rolls his eyes. “The Argents may _look_ like idiots, but they’re smarter than you think. You’re being careful, and there’s no reason to believe they suspect you at the moment, but that’s only because you’re in the early stages of your investigation. If and when they learn there’s a leak, things will be different. Their security will ramp up. They may start to investigate the anonymous tips at the Herald. They may even extend their searches to cameras in proximity to the docks,” he adds, nodding toward a traffic camera nearby. “Most importantly, the Argents know about the supernatural, meaning the advantages you have won’t seem quite as impossible to them.”

Stiles and Lydia frown, still gazing toward the camera.

“Having the Hale family at your back is a good layer of protection, in addition to what you’re already doing. The Argents think twice before they mess with one of ours—at least one who didn’t offer himself up to them, anyway. They know our retribution usually isn’t worth the initial attack. And given that your interest in the Argents aligns neatly with the interests of my family, we’d be happy to dispose of any obstacles in your path.”

“You mean kill anyone who gets close to us, Mr. Politician,” Stiles retorts. “ _Again_ with the double-talk.” Still, he appears to be thinking this over, as does Lydia. A nearby café, just opening its doors, lights up a neon sign advertising its hot coffee.

“It’s not like the idea never occurred to us,” Lydia observes at last. The comment seems to be more for Stiles than for Peter, and she turns to look at him, eyebrows raised.

Stiles sucks at his cheek for a long moment, and then he exhales slowly. “We should _definitely_ be running away from this asshole,” he laments, glaring dramatically at Peter.

For some reason, his playful tone makes Lydia snort and relax more than she has all night. And maybe it’s the easy familiarity of this, the wry grin that Stiles directs his way at last, that has Peter settling a hand on the small of Stiles’s back to draw him closer.

“Will you?” Peter wonders, his tone mild.

“Eh, I said _should_ ,” Stiles says before adding in a sly undertone, just for Peter, “and we’ve already established that I think with my dick too much.”

They cross the street to reach Peter’s car. If Peter hadn’t been well aware that his status as the Left Hand of a crime family makes him very suspicious in others’ eyes (in spite of the many ways he would argue that he is nothing but a true gentleman, thank you very much), he would have insisted on dropping Lydia off at her apartment. Once it becomes clear that she’s not particularly comfortable with the idea, Peter resigns himself to letting Stiles take her home.

To his surprise, however, she instead turns to smile at Stiles, dragging him around the side of a building and out of view of the street. “Let me borrow a little more of your juice,” she orders imperiously. “I’m not far from home. I can text when I’m there. And you...you should head back with him, okay?”

“Oh.” Stiles’s face turns surprised and then pleased. “Yeah. Sure.”

“Good. Go to sleep, you braindead loser.”

“Make me, punk.” He holds out a hand.

Lydia takes it. She lets her eyes flit up and down Peter. “I’ll see you when I see you,” she tells him airily.

“Not if I see you first,” Peter replies pleasantly. Her expression begins to grow either amused or suspicious, but before he can decide which, she’s gone as Stiles mutters under his breath. Her heartbeat’s gone too, and Peter can no longer catch any trace of her scent in the air.

“Alright,” Stiles replies blithely, in response to something Peter hasn’t heard. “I’ll see you then.” He pauses, listening, and then his cheeks go suddenly pink. “I _never_ said that, oh my god. Good _night, Lydia_!” he adds loudly, before turning to make his way to Peter’s car. Once there, he falls more than climbs into the passenger seat.

Peter gets in slowly, looking back at the empty space where Lydia’s disappeared. “You can hide something like that— _someone_ like that—even if you aren’t nearby?”

Stiles blinks, yawns, buckles his seatbelt. “That’s the thesis. Among a lot of other stuff, anyway. But yeah. It’s much harder, though, and I can’t do it for long. It’s like...I’m not _thinking_ about it all the time, but it’s kind of a strain on my mental processing, you know? Especially with Lyd, where I wanna give her the full vanishment package so she gets home okay.”

He leans back in his chair, bending his long legs to stick his feet on the dash. It’s a testament to the fact that Peter’s still letting everything he’s learned churn in his mind that he doesn’t even make a fuss about it.

Instead, he just pulls into the street. In the past few minutes, the glow to the east has become daylight, the sun rising just on the other side of the buildings. As Peter drives, he glances over to find that it’s turned Stiles’s milky skin to gold. Stiles’s eyes are closed and breathing has evened out a little—Peter himself is tired, so he imagines Stiles must be drained given the magical energy he’s spent—but not quite enough to indicate sleep. Eventually, Stiles’s phone buzzes in his jacket pocket. He struggles to draw it out. When he checks the screen, he sags with relief and exhaustion. Lydia, Peter guesses.

“Are you bringing me back to my place?” Stiles murmurs suddenly.

Peter hadn’t planned on it. “Do you want me to?”

“Not really.”

Peter hums, and then he takes them home.

~*~

Stiles doesn’t so much collapse into Peter’s bed as puddles into it, limbs spreading everywhere. He rests perfectly still where he lies. He doesn’t even bother to undress.

Peter rolls his eyes, being in the undesirable position of having to tug the blankets out from beneath him and pull off his shoes as if he’s some kind of nursemaid, but he plays the role dutifully anyway. If only because he can let his touch linger in places that interest him. Stiles grumbles irritably as Peter pulls and pushes him into place on the bed.

In spite of that irritation, however, he tugs Peter closer the minute Peter himself undresses and clambers in as well. He mutters something into Peter’s shoulder, his arm over Peter’s chest. Peter watches sleep drag Stiles down, and then he reluctantly brushes the hair out of Stiles’s face, pushing it back to wake him up a little. “Do you have to touch things when you vanish them?” he wonders aloud.

Stiles doesn’t bother to open his eyes. “Usually? Yeah. Unless I’m really familiar with whatever I’m vanishing. I’ve done it so often with Lyd that I can do it from a distance with her. But it’s a little easier if I’m holding her hand.” He eventually drags himself back to waking, resting his chin on Peter’s chest so he can scrutinize Peter’s carefully blank expression. “Why?” He frowns, suspicious. “Or... _what_?”

Peter smiles, a little surprised at himself for making the request, though he knows now that Stiles is the best person to ask. “I had a thought,” he begins pleasantly. “Could you temporarily—and only as needed, I promise—vanish, say, a little over a million in cash that the Argents are potentially paying a few cops to search for?”

“You…” Stiles stares at him, eyebrows creeping up his forehead. “Where’s the cash?” he asks, wary.

“In the back wall of the kitchen.”

“Of _my_ diner?” he exclaims incredulously, pounding Peter’s chest with a fist. His lethargy drains a great deal of force from the blow.

“It wouldn’t be strictly necessary, of course. But it would save me a lot of trouble if you did it soon.”

“Soon?”

“Today. Tomorrow.”

“I can’t fucking believe this.” Despite this statement, he lays his head back down and begins muttering to himself for a few moments. Peter assumes it’s a barrage of insults until he catches some of it here and there: _intangible too,_ and _easier to ward it_ and _people coming and going._

When he eventually drifts off into silence, Peter prompts him. “What’s the verdict, then?”

“It’ll be tough,” Stiles tells him sleepily. “But obviously, yes. And you’re going to pay me back by never fucking with my diner again, ever.”

“Is that so?” Peter asks in amusement, running his fingers down Stiles’s ribs and across his thigh. “Are you sure that’s the kind of reward you want to ask for?”

Stiles squirms under his touch, but he’s clearly too tired to reciprocate. “Specifically, I want you to tell me out loud that you will never fuck with my diner again, ever.”

“I will protect your diner, sweetheart,” Peter recites dutifully.

Stiles heaves a long-suffering sigh. “Close enough.” He pauses. “Wait, what were you going to do if I said no?”

“We had other plans. But having your help would be considerably less risky than moving the cash. Anyway,” Peter adds, raising a brow, “you aren’t afraid of what I could do to you if you refused?”

Stiles scoffs. “I could take you, creeperwolf,” he retorts, though the sleepy warble has crept back into his voice.

“Is that so?” Peter pushes him onto his back, leaning down to kiss him. Instead of his typical reception, the urgent pull and fumbling hands, Peter finds Stiles drowsy and pliant. He lets Peter weigh him down from above, makes a soft noise as Peter sweeps a tongue into his mouth. He does, however, push Peter away at last—and not just so he can breathe.

“Okay, first of all, don’t get offended when I pass out on you in the middle of this. Second, before I pass out, there’s one more thing, okay?” He waits for Peter’s nod. “If this—” he gestures between them “—is gonna work out, you _have_ to start telling me this kind of stuff.”

“‘This kind of stuff?’” Peter echoes, raising an eyebrow. Stiles glares, and Peter smirks down at him. “Alright. And you’ll do the same, then. No more politics.”

“No more politics,” Stiles agrees sleepily, reaching down to tug the blanket over them. “Now put your fancy-ass blackout shades to work.”

Peter huffs out a laugh. It’s a good call, though: the light is quickly growing a little too bright for sleep. Peter rolls over to tap the switch above his bedside table. The dark shades roll down over the glass, shutting out the coming day.

Morning is creeping over the city, and the world outside is waking up. When the mechanical whirr of the shades stops, though, it may as well be nighttime inside.

Peter pulls Stiles close.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thought u were getting an angsty mafia fic? well joke’s on u, suckers - we only write fluff in this house!!!
> 
> also there’s definitely gonna be another short addition to this series at some point. can’t say when, but the idea has formed fully fledged in my brain and it’s gonna bust out of me like alien if I don’t take care of it.
> 
> anyway, love you for reading, and hope you enjoyed! leave me a kudos or comment to let me know <3


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